GLENN’S TRIUMPH
Her moving message to women
There were gasps of surprise when Glenn Close was announced as the winner of the Best Actress in a Drama category at the Golden Globes last week – and one of the loudest most likely came from Glenn herself.
Although she’d won rave reviews for her portrayal of a long-suffering spouse in The Wife, the award was tipped to go to Lady Gaga for her role in
A Star Is Born and it came as a shock to many when Gary Oldman read out Glenn’s name.
Unless she was turning in the greatest performance of her career, Glenn appeared genuinely blown away to have won and once she got over her disbelief, she delivered a stirring speech that earned her a standing ovation.
Now her name is being bandied about as the favourite to win the Best Actress Oscar next month – something that would be the icing on the cake for the 71-year-old star.
She holds the distinction of being the living actor with the most Oscar nominations – six – who has never taken home one of the coveted gold statuettes.
Although she has a cabinet full of trophies – including three Tonys, three Emmys and now three Golden Globes – Glenn has been snubbed every time she has been in the running for an Academy Award.
She was nominated three years in a row from 1982 for Best Supporting Actress ( in The World According to Garp,
The Big Chill and The Natural) and later had three chances to be named best actress for Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons
and Albert Nobbs.
In the past, the Damages star has admitted she would love to win an Oscar, saying it would be added validation.
“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
THE STAR ON FEELING CLOSE TO FULFILLED
because of that feeling.
“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.”
But when asked about the Oscars after winning the Best Actress award for The Wife at the Hollywood Film Awards last year, she replied, “I am not even going to talk about that. I am very superstitious.”
Glenn diplomatically added that she gets more joy from the work itself than the recognition that may come later.
“Awards are wonderful, but it’s the cherry on the cake for me. The cake is the work and the process.”
As stunned as she may have been, Glenn quickly recovered to talk in her Golden Globes acceptance speech about the need for women to fulfil their creative potential.
This is the theme of The Wife, which is about a woman who puts her dreams to the side to support her successful writer husband. It’s also something that has touched Glenn’s life through her mother.
Bettine Close was a talented artist who married husband William when they were both
18, and sacrificed going to university to study art so she could raise their children and support his career as a surgeon.
Glenn says her mother “really sublimated herself to my father her whole life. In her 80s she said to me, ‘I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything’. And it was so not right.
“I feel like what’ve learned from this whole experience is women, we’re nurturers, that’s what’s expected of us. We have our children, we have our husbands if we’re lucky enough, and our partners.
“But we have to find personal fulfilment. We have to follow our dreams. We have to say, ‘I can do that, and I should be allowed to do that’.”
It’s a matter of figuring out what you want to do, and then being brave enough to try to do it, even if you think your chances have passed you by, Glenn says.
“It’s not too late to follow your dream and hopefully find support in that with people who love you.”
Married and divorced four times and the mum of one, actress Annie Starke, Glenn didn’t become a professional actress until her late 20s, and was 35 when she got her first film job.
One of the reasons Glenn was able to understand Joan so well was because she knows what it’s like to make sacrifices.
“You sacrifice time with your child, relationships, vacations even. This job demands a lot,” she says. “But it’s the best job in the world at the same time. I would never change it for anything else.”
‘This job demands a lot. But it’s the best job in the world at the same time’