Verna Bloom

Verna Frances Bloom (August 7, 1938 – January 9, 2019) was an American actress. She is noted for roles in the films Medium Cool (1969), High Plains Drifter (1973) and Animal House (1978).

Verna Frances Bloom, born on August 7, 1938, in Lynn, Massachusetts, grew up in a Russian Jewish family where her father, Milton, operated a grocery store. Her mother, Sara (Damsky) Bloom, initially focused on managing their household. After Milton and Sara divorced, Sara took charge of the family grocery business and later transitioned to bookkeeping for a trucking company. She attended the School of Fine Arts at Boston University, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1959. She also studied at the Herbert Berghof Studio for actors in New York City.

On Broadway, Bloom portrayed Charlotte Corday in The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (1967) and Blanche Morton in Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983). She made her film debut in Medium Cool, and then co-starred in Clint Eastwood's 1973 film, High Plains Drifter and in the 1974 made-for-TV movie Where Have All The People Gone? with Peter Graves and Kathleen Quinlan. Bloom also had roles in more than 30 films and television episodes beginning in the 1960s, including playing Mary, mother of Jesus, in The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988 and Marion Wormer in Animal House in 1978.

Bloom married Richard Collier, but they separated by 1969. They began the Trident Theater in Denver Colorado, which operated from 1963 to 1965. In 1972 she married film critic Jay Cocks. They had a son, Sam, born in 1981. The couple remained married until her death.

Bloom died aged 80 on January 9, 2019, in Bar Harbor, Maine, from complications of dementia.