When Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar sent his script for “Talk to Her” to Sony Pictures Classics, he was eager to have one partner at the group in particular read it.

“He was nervous about how I would respond,” Marcie Bloom recalled, “because, he told me later the film was partially inspired by me.”

Ms. Bloom is an inspiration to many others in the movie business. Tonight, the industry’s movers and shakers will officially raise a glass to her at the Hamptons International Film Festival. In recognition of the honor, her admirers took out a total of 20 pages of advertising in an issue of Variety last week.

“I’m joking that I own that issue,” she said.

Mr. Almodovar was moved by a specific aspect of Ms. Bloom’s life: His central character and Ms. Bloom shared the experience of being in a coma.

Sadly, for Ms. Bloom, it wasn’t just a story, it was her reality.

Ms. Bloom’s coma, which lasted for two weeks, came in 1996, after a sudden brain hemorrhage. She had returned from a business trip with a painful headache. Her doctor told her it was a sinus infection. The pain persisted and she went to the nurse’s office at Sony, where she collapsed.

The next thing she remembers is waking up in Lenox Hill Hospital after emergency brain surgery.

Her father told her she was partially paralyzed on her left side, and would be confined in a wheelchair.

It slowed down a rocket-speed rise from film publicist to founding partner at Sony Pictures Classics, during which time she acquired all of Almodovar’s films and so many others, including “Howard’s End,” and “The Opposite of Sex.”

Recovery was difficult, but she got through with the help of her friends, family, and colleagues.

“My mother just put her life on hold – she moved in with me during rehab.” Ms. Bloom had to had to relearn the most basic tasks, including speaking and swallowing.

“I lived on Carvel Thickshakes – vanilla and chocolate. I had worked at Carvel when I was in high school.”

Her peers at Sony “were unbelievably supportive, generous, kind, optimistic, loving,” she said. “You generally think of corporations as being unfeeling and unsupportive – that’s not been my experience,” she said.

Now she goes into the office “once in a while” and calls herself semi-retired.

“I used to have a fantasy of retiring early and moving to Tuscany. I got the ‘retire early’ part,” she said.

“I don’t miss the pressure. I used to smoke cigarettes. I was in a constant state of jet lag – I traveled five months a year, running through airport terminals with my computer and my luggage. I was on the film festival circuit from January to November.”

What she still enjoys is the team spirit that she shares with her partners at Sony Pictures Classics: “Our relationship is hard to characterize. It’s hours and hours of talking things through. I remember being on the phone – we’d be discussing a movie I’d seen. It was like an interrogation. They ask, who’s the audience, did you cry?”

There was nothing in her upbringing to suggest a film career: her father was a dentist, her mother a homemaker. She was raised in Brooklyn and Long Island.

However, there was at least one quality that indicated her passion for movies. “I was always starstruck,” she said. As a child, Ms. Bloom worshipped Julie Andrews and Barbra Streisand. She loved “The Sound of Music” and “Camelot.”

Although she’s spent her career mingling with celebrities, she’s still a bit starstruck. These days, her idols are Patti Labelle, Tina Turner, and Bette Middler.

“I’m an obsessive fan,” she said. “I once stood in line for 11 hours in 18-degree weather to get tickets for Bette Middler. One of my theme songs is ‘Wind Beneath My Wings.'”

In analyzing her choice of celebrities, she has observed that, “they all represent very strong women who are confident, physically and vocally. That appeals to me, even though I’m not those things. I experience them vicariously.”

Ms. Bloom said she is also drawn to filmmakers who create strong portraits of women – such as Mr. Almodovar.

After Cornell, she looked for a way to be near celebrities, and found a job at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where she developed her career specialty: foreign and independent films.

“I guess my goal was to be around creative people without being just a groupie,” she said. Her career as a film publicist included four years at the power firm PMK Public Relations, where she worked on “Au Revoir Les Engants,” “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” and “Dangerous Liaisons.”

One of her most successful campaigns was for “Babette’s Feast.” The movie tells the story of a cook who transforms a stern town with her meals. Ms. Bloom arranged “Babette’s Feasts” in all the cities the film played, including one at Petrossian in New York. The movie went on to win the Academy Award for best foreign film.

She noted the lack of appreciation for publicists: “Being a publicist can be a thankless job. If a film is a great success, no one credits the publicist.”

In 1989, two partners at Orion Pictures, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, took her to dinner at Patsy’s on 56th Street and asked her to join them in acquisitions.

“It came as a total surprise,” she said. Even though the transition raised eyebrows, her mentor at PMK urged her on her way: “Go ahead, be great.”

“I was terrified but also attracted to idea of doing all the traveling, it seemed glamorous to me. But at the time I was scared to death.”

She learned to negotiate “just by doing.” She clearly had a good eye. Among her first acquisitions were the Oscar winners “Cyrano de Bergerac,” “Europa Europa,” and “Raise the Red Lantern.”

In 1992, Messrs. Barker and Bernard, along with Ms. Bloom, formed Sony Pictures Classics, which produces, acquires, and distributes films. They all live in New York – Ms. Bloom makes her home on West 79th Street. “Staying in New York was part of our contracts,” she said.

Her films that are out now include “Bad Education” by Mr. Almodovar, and “House of Flying Daggers,” by the director of “Raise the Red Lantern,” Yimou Zhang, which she describes as “better than “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (another film she brought to America).

“It’s easier to follow. It’s phenomenal. You can’t believe what you’ve just seen. I remember first time I saw ‘Apocalypse Now’ in ’70s I was amazed you could even imagine the scene with the helicopters – that’s how I feel seeing this movie.”

And in the pipeline: A Merchant Ivory film shooting in Shanghai, and a Wim Wenders film starring Jessica Lange and Sam Shephard.

Would her own life story make a good movie? “There are those disease of the week movies on TV. I can’t think of many theatrical films that have tried to portray this – usually they focus on alcohol and drug addictions. I don’t think people want to pay $10 to see that kind of story and I don’t blame them.”