WHILE GROWING up with her three siblings in Greenwich, Conn., Glenn Close remembers “pretending a lot. We had a trunk full of puppets, and we were always making up stories.” But things became all too real when she
turned 7 and her parents joined “a cult-like group where everybody is supposed to say the same thing and act in the same way.” It took 15 years
for her to break away. “We all try to survive, right? And I think what actually saved me more than anything was my desire to be an actress.” As a three-time winner of Tony and Emmy awards, she became that and more. And while she’s yet to win an Oscar after eight nominations, a record she shares with Peter O’Toole, Glenn, who turns 75 on March 19,
hasn’t seen that desire diminish. “There are so many things I’m interested in doing,” she says. “It’s one of those ironies, I suppose, that we sometimes start feeling comfortable in our own skin only late in our
lives, but hopefully with enough time to benefit from it.”
“We have to follow our dreams. We have to say, ‘I can do that, and I should be allowed to do that.’ ”
—Glenn Close
1983 BIG
2
FEAR While she had dated on-screen husband Kevin Kline prior to filming, it wasn’t the biggest challenge Glenn faced on The Big Chill. What was? “Dancing. I was the worst dancer, and there’s a big shot of my bum and it looks like I know what I’m doing — but I’m very insecure about dancing. Now? Depends on how much liquor I’m consuming.”
1996
5 WITCH HUNT
“My first reaction was: She’s not witty enough,” shared Glenn of the despicable Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians. “She should be a combination of Noel Coward and the Marquis de Sade. She’s the devil. The meaner she is, the funnier she is. She’s a witch! You can’t be a half-ass witch!”
2014
8 PRIME TARGET
“It’s like what we used to do when we were kids: Let’s pretend,” she said of showing off her playful side as Nova Prime in the superhero hit Guardians of the Galaxy. “I just have to let people know that I always have been up for anything. I love to do stuff that’s different. That’s what I love.”
1987 FATAL FLAW “I was on a
3 totally different level with that character,” reflected Glenn on her role as Alex in Fatal Attraction. “I wasn’t playing an evil person. I was playing a person in distress who had no help — and I loved her. And when they came back, and we had to change the ending and made her into basically a psychopath with a knife in her hand, it was profoundly difficult for me.”
1994 INTO
4 THE SUNSET
Glenn once admitted to seeing a bit of herself in her Tony-winning turn as Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond. “I think they talk about her when she was young — that she had a sense of wonder. I think anybody who goes into [acting] has that. A sense of wonder, a sense of excitement. I think I share that with her.”
2007 DOING DAMAGE “I don’t know
6 if I ever truly totally say goodbye to these characters,” reflected Glenn, who won two Emmys as ruthless lawyer Patty Hewes on Damages (with Rose Byrne). “I think they stay — they reside in me somewhere. [But] Patty can be kind of dark,
2017 TRUE TO LIFE With her
9 title role in The Wife, Glenn found a new insight into her own life. “[My mother] had a great sense of sticking to her vows .... In an ideal world, how wonderful for all of us to stick to our vows. I’m not particularly proud of the fact that I’ve been married three times, but that’s just the way life is.”
2011 MAN UP After
7 playing the transgender butler on stage in 1982, Glenn was determined to bring Albert Nobbs to the screen... though it took 30 years. “I know there are people like that in the world — a lot of invisible, isolated people. And I think they deserve to have their stories told.”
2020
10 WIN OR
LOSE “It might be cool to never get one,” joked Glenn, who lost out on an Oscar for the eighth time with Hillbilly Elegy. “I just have to keep doing what’s good. You’re fulfilled by your work, and that’s the process to me. It’s what feeds my soul...but it really is nice when other people like it.”
47