Glenn does it again
Close encounter
She’s the woman who brought Cruella de Vil to life and made straying husbands think again with her ‘‘bunny-boiling’’ performance in Fatal Attraction.
And as The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley once put it: ‘‘Nobody was creepier as a Nazi officer than Donald Pleasence, or more disturbing than Anthony Hopkins in his Hannibal Lecter restraining mask. But there is no actor dead or alive as scary as a smiling Glenn Close.’’
Even the director of the now 71-year-old actress’ latest film, Bjorn Runge admits he was a little intimidated about meeting her for the first time.
He says his good friend Stellan Skarsgard offered him some slightly disquieting advice: ‘‘Glenn Close eats people like you and me for breakfast – you must be very prepared and aware.’’
Hardly calming the Swedish film-maker’s nerves was the fact that he was essentially auditioning for her and that they were meeting for the aforementioned first meal of the day. However, as he recounts, he needn’t have worried.
‘‘We spent about two hours talking about general things in life and then suddenly we got more and more private.
‘‘She told me about something in her life that was her emotional ticket for the character, and I told her my emotional ticket for why I wanted to direct it. After that, she said, ‘I want you to direct this film and I have full trust for you and I trust your instincts’.’’
That trust has resulted in one of Close’s finest and most-nuanced performances. Already the talk is of a stellar awards season for the six-time Academy Award nominee.
In The Wife, she plays Joan Castleman, the spouse of acclaimed writer Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), who is set to be honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature. But as they head to Stockholm for the ceremony, a dogged reporter’s (Christian Slater) digging threatens to reveal the truth about the dynamics of their relationship.
Based on Meg Wolitzer’s 2003 novel, it’s an absorbing drama and the perfect showcase for Close’s emotional range.
So it comes as something of a surprise when Close says that she related to Wife’s Joan, ‘‘because I’m not a fighter’’. That’s something audibly disputed by her daughter Annie Starke – ‘‘I disagree with that, oh my gosh, mother’’ – who not only stars in the movie as a younger version of Joan, but is also sitting in on today’s interview.
‘‘I’m not a confrontational person and I’ve learned that there’s fight, there’s flight and there’s freeze – and I understand all those feelings,’’ says Close, who has been married and divorced four times.
She says she’s now in a much happier place in terms of her career and life than at any stage in the past 35 years.
‘‘I’ve accepted the fact, at this late stage, that I’m a true introvert... funnily enough.
‘‘So I don’t feel necessarily comfortable walking into a party where I don’t know anybody. I now realise that I forced myself to do things my whole life that haven’t really brought me joy. And in making that realisation I think I took some of the burden off that if something doesn’t bring you joy you don’t have do it and feel guilty about that.’’
Admitting that life has always been ‘‘a little trickier than work for me’’, Close puts her Hollywood longevity (she made her first movie appearance in 1982’s The World According to Garp, after initially making her name as a stage actress) down to her versatility.
‘‘I don’t want to sound facile in any way, but I’ve always tried to stay very subjective to what I think is good, and keep very open to new things. If it’s television and it’s beautifully written, then I’ll do it.
Born and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, Close recalls that while her early acting inspirations were Disney princesses Snow White and Cinderella, she actually didn’t go to a lot of theatre or see a lot of films growing up.
‘‘I saw those two though and said, ‘I could do that’. Mostly though, I played around in the countryside pretending to be mostly a cowboy and then I just didn’t want to stop playing – it just seemed natural to me.’’
But though Close says she knew what she wanted to do, it was only when she watched an interview with Katharine Hepburn on The Dick Cavett Show that a fire was lit under her.
‘‘It was captivating,’’ Close told Vanity Fair last year, recalling how she had the TV on while she was painting a set for a college production. ‘‘Something said to me, ‘You want to do that? Do it!’ ’’
Remembering it now, Close says that the morning after seeing that interview, she went to the head of the college’s theatre department and said she wanted to be nominated for some upcoming national auditions.
‘‘That was the last day you could put the letter in the mail and that led to my first job.’’
When asked what it was about Hepburn that she so admired, Close says that it was because ‘‘she always seemed so individual and knew who she was and, in this business, that’s a rare thing to see. I’ve always thought she was one of the great pioneers on whose shoulders I stand’’.
In 1990, while helping celebrate Hepburn’s achievements at the annual Kennedy Centre Honours, Close got the opportunity to tell her about what an inspiration she had been. Not long after, Close received a letter which read:
‘‘Dear Glenn Close, A great big hug for your sweet contribution. I’m glad I persuaded you when you were a mere child to join this terrible profession, this terrifying profession and, let’s face it, this delicious way to spend your life. With affectionate thanks, Kate Hep’’.
Close had the letter framed, and she treats it as one of her most cherished possessions.
Perhaps aware of how ‘‘terrible’’ and ‘‘terrifying’’ acting can be, Close says she never encouraged her now 30-year-old daughter Starke (whose father is Sicario and Deadpool producer John H Starke) to become an actress.
Starke says that she kept her desire to follow in her mother’s footsteps a secret.
‘‘I was hesitant because I had been raised around this, quite frankly, brutal industry but, at the same time, you have to be who you are and so when I finally came to terms with that, I came out of the closet. Being an actor is so ingrained in who you are, that you can’t not be creative.’’
Chiming in, Close recalls how Starke tried to fight against those creative instincts, ‘‘because it is hard to be the daughter of…’’, before Starke adds that her father ‘‘was not pleased’’ when she finally decided to pursue acting.
Starke, who made her debut as a chocolate shop waitress in another of her mother’s critically acclaimed movies – 2011’s Albert Nobbs – says she believes women are making progress in Hollywood, but there’s a long way to go.
‘‘Just look at how women are paid. I hope, if I have a daughter, that the times will have continued to flow in the right direction. It feels like there’s been an enormous revolution [for] women in comedy, hopefully that will be the case throughout the entertainment industry. There have certainly been signals that the world is hopefully rotating in the right way.’’
Close agrees that things have changed for the better in her time, but that there ‘‘always seems to be an almost biological barrier for men to accept the leadership of women’’.
‘‘I think they’re better at it here [in Canada], than we are in our poor, fractured country.’’
That comment leads to the inevitable conversation around her opinion of the current occupier of the White House.
‘‘Businessmen should not run countries – but they do. They’ve been above government with all these connections and now he [Donald Trump] finds himself in government, all those connections don’t work – they’re illegal.’’
Connections are, though, what got Starke the part in The Wife. Director Runge had originally cast someone else in the role of the young Joan, but when that actress was picked up for a long-term series, it was Close who suggested he should screen-test her daughter.
‘‘I did three,’’ Runge laughs, adding that Starke had exactly the qualities he was looking for.
‘‘I think it’s nice,’’ he says of having a mother-daughter combination playing the same character at different periods of her life. ‘‘Because it’s different stories and requires a totally different way to act.’’
Close and Starke though see more of the similarities between themselves as key.
‘‘I’ve been around her for long enough that I know some of her mannerisms,’’ Starke says of her mother. ‘‘We walk the same – which is inelegantly, by the way.’’
Close agrees they have the same tastes and instincts. But while she loved having her daughter in the same movie, she deliberately decided to avoid the set when Starke was shooting her scenes.
‘‘She doesn’t need me around. For me, she’s taken to acting like a duck to water.
‘‘She’s my gosling. Put her in the water and she’s just swimming. It’s natural to her. I’m thrilled. I’m very proud of her.’’
‘‘She’s taken to acting like a duck to water – she’s my gosling. Put her in the water and she’s just swimming.’’ Glenn Close on her daughter, Annie Starke, left