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Trained for an acting career by Uta Hagen and Herbert Bergdorf, Verna Bloom burst onto the Broadway scene in the role of psychotic somnambulist Charlotte Corday in the American production of Marat/Sade. Her first film was Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, playing the mother of incipient radical Mark Blankenship. She has since played character roles ranging from shopping-bag ladies to supercilious socialites in such films as High Plains Drifter (1971), Heroes (1977), National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) and After Hours (1985). In Martin Scorcese's The Last Temptation of Christ, Verna was seen as a decidedly careworn Virgin Mary. Verna Bloom's television credits include several made for TV movies, including Sarah T: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1975) and Playing for Time (1980).