Glenn Close and I are peering at the sky with Concern.
Tonight, the premiere of her new film, The Wife, takes place in the courtyard of Somerset House in London. After months of blistering, scorching heat, today is the day that the skies are fat and grey with the threat of rain.
And it’s an important day. One that’s been coming for five years — since Close first read the script (adapted from a book), ostensibly telling the story of a wife, that hadn’t even secured financing yet. She was intrigued by Joan, the wife of the title, who we meet as her husband, writer Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), is awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. As they travel to Stockholm for the ceremony, their marriage begins to unravel under the weight of a secret they’ve shouldered between them for 40 years.
No matter what the title would suggest, like all of Close’s characters, Joan is not a woman who conforms to traditional gender stereotypes. She isn’t a typical woman at all — that is to say, the typical woman you see on screen. Maybe, the whispers suggest, this will be the film that sees Glenn Close finally recognised by the Academy after six nominations and no wins.
But, for now, she has more pressing things on her mind. We look once more at the sky, sending up a prayer: don’t let it rain on her parade.
What did you find compelling about the script? And about Joan?
She was a kind of character I’ve never played before. I didn’t have to go over territory covered before, emotionally or psychologically.
In what ways do you think she’s different?
More of an introvert, I think, which I can relate to. [Laughs] Certainly not like the women I’m… You know, a lot of people think of me as strong. As [playing] women in men’s worlds.
There’s definitely a quietness to her — but a simmering rage, too?
Well, she’s complicit in what has become the arrangement of how they live their life. So I think that a lot of rage is aimed towards him [Joe], but there’s rage aimed at herself as well, for letting herself be put in that position. What I realised when I saw it, is that it’s really about a very complex, believable marriage. There’s a kind of diminishment that comes with being with a man who is basically a narcissist. And the women can become enablers.
Do you think women are getting better at articulating, if not rage, then frustration?
Yes. I think the more we can dispassionately articulate it, the better off we’ll be. Because rage, ultimately, is self-defeating. I think you can’t deny it, but you’ve got to deal with it in such a way that that’s not the only way you can express yourself. But, yes, I think a lot of people are feeling a lot of rage. And it’s not being met by our leaders, by our cultural icons, in a way. I mean, that’s where I think the arts can be so important, because they’re such an outlet for that, and can channel it in a positive way. And you can tell a story that makes people think and really talk about things. I don’t think you can come out of this movie and not say, “How’s my relationship?”, you know.
Now, the title. It’s pretty amazing that a film called The
Wife got made. But it wasn’t financed by traditional Hollywood means…
It’s a very independent film. I really had no idea how people would react. And so, just sitting in Toronto [at the film festival], and seeing and hearing that audience, and hearing how they got every nuance… I can still take myself back to that moment. You knew in that moment that it was touching something fundamental, and not just with women, with men as well. The novel was written 14 years ago. The screenplay, by Jane Anderson, not long after that. And it hadn’t budged in 14 years. Think about it: two women writers; a woman, Rosalie Swedlin, was the main producer. It’s kind of remarkable. It represents what I believe will be the future.
Do you think it takes more for a male actor to be in a film like this?
Absolutely. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that Jonathan [Pryce] saw that even though he was going to be reviled, it was an astonishing role for him. And it takes a very accomplished man to pull that off.
Your daughter Annie Starke plays the younger Joan. When she first talked about going into acting, how did you feel about that?
I expected it. Though she put it off. When she was in high school and middle school, she didn’t do that much theatre. I think she was always very aware of being super-judged, and it was always very hard for her. She’s a wonderful girl, she has an amazing group of friends, and she knows that they love her for her. But when she was growing up she didn’t know if somebody wanted to be her friend because she had a famous mother, or because of her. That’s hard. So she’s gone through all that. You know, when you’re at the beginning of your career, the last thing you want to do is be perceived as being on your mother’s coat-tails. So it was a very hard decision for her to even audition [for The Wife]. But she won the part fair and square. And when she worked, I got out of town. I didn’t want her to feel obligated to meet me in the hallways or anything. When I saw her on film, I was so proud.
Your own journey to becoming an actor was quite different. You’ve said before that it was seeing a Katharine Hepburn interview in college?
That set me on my road. I’d wanted to be an actor since I was seven. There was never anything else that I wanted to do.
Where does that come from at seven?
I think it comes from my early childhood where it was just... imagination. When my dad was in medical school we had a little cottage that was on my maternal grandfather’s farm in Connecticut. And we had that whole incredible countryside to run around in. We were always playing games. When I went to college, I majored in theatre for four years and minored in anthropology. It was a liberal art school, and I didn’t really know how to proceed, and then I saw that interview. And something just kind of coalesced in me. I said, you know, “If that’s what you want to do, do it.” Then I went the next day to the head of that department, who was my mentor, and it was the last day that he could put a letter in the mail to recommend me for national auditions.
There were difficult moments growing up [Close was raised in a cult]. Do you think that your imagination was a form of escape, of creating a different world for yourself ? Absolutely. Yes. Except… yes and no. I read somewhere that actors get immediate self-gratification, certainly on the stage. I think in all actors there’s this need — a need to do what you do, but you also feed on getting that… What’s the word?
Validation? Validation. Yeah. I guess.
Or recognition?
Yeah. When you’re a young child and you’re in a cult group, that group becomes your parent. In mine, I wasn’t a rebel, like my sister. I tried to be a little soldier. So, you know, “Who do you want me to be? I can be that.” Yeah, it’s very destructive.
So with acting, you took that and made it into something positive and healthy? Or do you think playing a role was just something you were used to doing?
[Pauses] Good question. I think my imagination... I was a very shy child to begin with, and it probably put me even deeper into my head.
Does it take years to unlearn those rules or boundaries that were part of your life then?
I think when you’re that young, and you go from seven to 22 [in the cult], which are major formative years, it affects you. It’s something I’ve struggled with my whole life. And, only maybe four years ago, I was so tired of it, I finally went to a childhood trauma specialist. Because that’s what it was. It was deep childhood trauma. And sometimes you could deal with it, because it’s not that I was thrown out on the street — I’ve always had clothes and food to eat — but it was definitely, incredibly… a mind-fuck. I think also, you know, you talked about rage? I think the rage that formed in me has in many ways fuelled my art. Maybe it was just because of where I’ve come from, I’ve always felt that lasting art comes out of a sense of outrage about something. Something fuels us, and if you’re totally settled and you’re totally happy, it’s like, you know, there’s no reason to express yourself in another way.
People make assumptions about the characters you’ve played — well, that they’re strong, crazy bitches! Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction, for example.
She was made the antagonist, and you have to have antagonists. And if you’re not going to have a Nazi, or someone from ISIS, it’s somebody who has a mental illness or who’s mentally disturbed. You know, who scares people. So she became an easy antagonist, without us really knowing what was informing her behaviour. I have to find a place where I actually can love my characters. And I loved her, because I was playing a woman who had been incested, repeatedly over a number of years when she was young, enough to really, really damage her. And knowing what that does and if that could’ve triggered extreme borderline personality [disorder]… But there was never enough in the screenplay to say that. I’ve now been thinking that it would be really interesting to tell the same story from her point of view. And to see how people take it. I mean, that would be interesting. I might actually try to do that.
I mean, she’s every man’s worst nightmare, and actually also every wife’s worst nightmare.
I fought for her as much as I could. I’m proud of that character. And I love her. And I think, if you saw it from her point of view, you’d say, “This woman really needs help. She’s a desperate person in danger of herself.” That character would’ve killed herself, or taken her own life, before she could’ve taken somebody else’s. It was a great lesson in what audiences need, when you’re that upset. It’s like women who overkill
their abusers. They don’t stab them twice, they stab them 50 times. It’s like, it wasn’t enough that she killed herself. She had to be killed.
Well, multiple times. Multiple times.
She was really punished in the end.
Yeah, which is interesting, because the character [Marquise de Merteuil] that I played in Dangerous Liaisons, when the book came out, it was first banned. And then [novelist Pierre Choderlos de] Laclos was made to add that she got smallpox.
And then Cruella de Vil.
Who’s the devil! Black, like the colour. She’s a classic fairy-tale witch.
But then you’ve also done completely different things, like British zombie thriller The Girl With All The Gifts.
Oh, yes! I loved that script. It was beautifully written, and I thought the premise was genius. It’s not interesting to me to just play somebody who’s considered a villain — and she [Dr Caroline Caldwell] certainly was considered the villain — but she had moments where you saw there was enough to make her interesting. And I loved that. I love the grey area of life where we all live.
And Guardians Of The Galaxy was different again.
That was like going back to my childhood. First of all, I always wanted to be in a movie like that, so I was so happy to be asked. And to be in the room where there was a big control room, the war outside, but it was nothing when we were shooting it. It was just a guy with a big pole with a tennis ball on it, and they’d say, “Look at the ball, and imagine.” And I thought, “I can do that! I can do that! That’s easy.” It was so much fun. And I have to say, [director] James Gunn was fantastic. He was lovely. And what I really thought was extraordinary about him is that in a movie that was storyboarded up the wazoo, because you have to with so many special effects, I never felt I was being pushed into something that had already been worked on in that sense, somehow.
What do you think of Guardians without him?
It’s hard to think of it without him. It’s sad. And it brings up, I think, some very tricky issues around this movement. I bring it up with every woman I talk to because I want to know what people feel, you know? Is that truly what we should be doing? Especially in this case, somebody [alt-right blogger Mike Cernovich] who’s known to ruin people for something that they wrote in a totally different context, what, ten, 12 years ago? What are we going to do, go back to our pasts and make sure that everything we said was politically correct? Who can live like that? I just feel that there’s something wrong about that. We are very flawed creatures. Look at what we’re doing to our fucking world. It’s a question I was talking about to somebody last night — you have somebody that actually has the creative energy to create something like Guardians Of The Galaxy. He’s a flawed human being. He was a, you know, cocky asshole back then, and was saying things to provoke people. Does that negate him as an artist? I don’t think so. I personally do not think so. Or else we’re taking down buildings and paintings — you know, take down all the Picassos, he treated women terribly. If it’s going to be a lasting cultural revolution, which is a big change, if… We’ve got to take into consideration human nature. Do you think it’s a consequence of the current political climate?
Yes. Absolutely. We’re in a savage part of time in our history in America. It’s deeply upsetting.
We’re in a not-dissimilar place here. It feels global. Everyone feels so insecure. And so frightened.
What do you think art can do in that circumstance?
Art can make people think of the other side of things. I think art can be a great comfort. I think art can inspire people to listen to their higher selves. I think art can reveal the human condition with all its complexities. Art, to me, is, as a collective, what humankind pumps into the collective nervous system. And we’re fragile. If you keep pumping rage and violence and cruelty, that will have an effect and it will change people’s behaviour. But if you can put in, when we say a sense of humanity, I mean, what does that mean? Because humankind is getting pretty rough. I guess it’s talking to the positive things that we’re capable of. I want to tell stories that are on the healing side of things, rather than on the destructive side of things.
The Wife is in cinemas from 28 september