Verna Frances Bloom, born on August 7, 1938, in Lynn, Massachusetts, grew up in a Russian Jewish family[1] where her father, Milton, operated a grocery store.

[2] She graduated from Boston University and later studied at the Herbert Berghof Studio for actors in New York.

[1] 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).

Bloom also had roles in more than 30 films and television episodes beginning 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 was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and attended the School of Fine Arts at Boston University, graduating with a BFA in 1959.