GLENN’S OSCARS BUZZ
Why Glenn is no trophy wife
It might finally be her time!
THE STAR OF THE WIFE EXPLAINS WHY LIFE IS SO GOOD RIGHT NOW
She’s the actress that has been nominated for six Oscars and won none. In fact, she’s currently tied with Thelma Ritter and Deborah
Kerr for the most Oscars lost among actresses.
If there’s one unfortunate record Glenn Close would rather not be known for, it’s this one. But that could all be about to change with the veteran actress’ new movie The Wife.
Garnering critical acclaim and that so-longed for Oscar buzz, Glenn (71) looks on track to put those losses behind her and potentially take the lead in bringing home that coveted golden statue.
Not that she has desired a particular validation for her work in the past, she says, but with such a rich career of complex and versatile characters behind her – no-one can forget her bunny-boiling Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction or the high-powered attorney Patty Hewes in the TV series Damages − the Connecticut native won’t deny a yearning for the acknowledgement of her ability to dig deep and deliver.
“I’ve always felt like I’m an outsider looking in and I guess that’s why something like an Oscar would mean a lot, because of that feeling,” she says. “It’s the most valued recognition you can get, certainly in film, and having been doing it for so long, it would mean a lot to me.”
And if there was ever a time for a film such as The Wife to be seen, it’s now, among the #MeToo era where women’s voices are finally rising above the fray to be truly heard.
Glenn is hopeful that this change will continue to make waves for women in Hollywood.
“I don’t think we’ll ever go back to where we were before. I think there’s been too much of one explosion after another, and I hope we find a balance that will settle into a real cultural revolution where women are in a different place.”
Playing the wife of a highlyacclaimed writer about to be
recognised with a Nobel literature prize, Glenn portrays a woman who has put many of her own writing dreams on hold to be a steadfast support for her husband. But she can suppress her voice no longer, something Glenn says she has witnessed from her parents in her own life.
“My mother married at 18. Dad, a doctor, was sent away to school at seven and considered it abandonment. He was narcissistic. Difficult to live with,” she recalls. “My brilliant mother never graduated high school. She had a huge library but no fulfilment. Sublimating her whole life, at the end she said, ‘I accomplished nothing.’
“This role had meaning for me. I feel strongly because of my beloved mother. The film’s overachieving husband tried to prove he’s worth loving − but never realised his wife needed nurturing.”
Married three times herself, Glenn is happily single now and has one daughter, Annie Starke (30), to her former film producer partner John Starke. Fittingly, Annie plays a younger Glenn in flashbacks throughout the film.
“I think it is a positive evolutionary component that we are better with a partner,” Glenn explains. “I think to have a partner that you can go through life with,
creating a history with, that you can find a comfort with, have children with – there is nothing better. This is an opinion I have come to very late in life, at an ironic moment, where I don’t have any of that. I don’t know if I will again.”
But she’s assured that right now, she is happy and fulfilled – partner or no partner.
“This is a good time in life. I do think what would it be like to have a partner again? But it would have to be very different from what I had before.”
Aside from acting, Glenn is also championing a cause much closer to home. She set up the Bring Change to Mind campaign in 2010 that aims to remove the stigma around mental illness, which
Glenn has experience of first-hand through her younger sister
Jessie, who has bipolar disorder.
“Talking about mental illness just wasn’t done,” she tells of her past. “You don’t have a vocabulary for it and you’re also very aware of appearances.”
But now, she’s doing all she can to change that.
“Our basic message was, and still is, to just ‘start the conversation’,” she says. “If we can beat the stigma, lives will be saved, untapped extraordinary minds will have the possibility of recovering to the point where they become contributing members of our community.”