Who Is Claire Bloom? Philip Roth's Ex-Wife 'Blew The Whistle' On Author

Claire Bloom, the former spouse of legendry American novelist Philip Milton Roth, is a well-known TV, stage and screen actress. Born in 1931, she showed interest in theater at a very young age. She took the first curtain call in the production of "It Depends What You Mean" in 1946. She received critical accolades at the age of 17 for her Shakespearean ingénues in "King John", "The Winter's Tale" and her Ophelia in "Hamlet".

Though she made her screen debut in the British courtroom film drama "The Blind Goddess," it was her second film with Charlie Chaplin that propelled her to stardom.

She led a charmed life in her twenties and played leading lady to Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier. She came to be known as the beguiling dark-haired actress, whose beauty was accentuated with poise and elegance.

But then she faced troubles with three difficult, volatile marriages. She claimed her divorce with Philip Roth in 1995 after being married for 5 years was bitter and that he flooded her with faxes demanding the return of every penny he had spent on her. In an effort to save their relationship, Bloom proposed marriage to Roth in 1991.

"My crime was that I blew the whistle on Philip Roth. I thought what I was doing was giving the world a truthful picture. Much of it was bad, but there was also great love between us and I tried to convey the spirit of that love," she said, the Telegraph reported.

Bloom wrote a candid memoir of their life together. In her 1996 autobiography "Leaving A Doll's House," she talks about Roth as a self-centered misogynist and tells a bitter one-sided story of a love gone sour.

She also talks about how her relationship with her opera singer daughter Anna was strained by Roth. "Anna, furious and justifiably hurt, said that I had once again chosen a man over her... I feared Anna was right,” she writes stating that she was forced to send Anna away.

She also wrote that Roth was bored and angered by their obsessive discussions and accused her of having an unhealthy preoccupation with her daughter. Bloom claimed Roth had made a pass at her daughter’s friend.

She concluded her memoir by describing one of her last meetings with Roth in a restaurant in New York where they joked and laughed.

Gore Vidal, Bloom’s friend said both of them were neurotic and were together for 17 years and it all seemed fine to him, the New York Times reported. ''It's always best to stay out of other people's divorces, and their civil wars,” he said.

Bloom threatened to sue Roth after he named a character of a jealous wife in one of his novels after her.