INTERVIEW
9 LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT GLENN CLOSE
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When she was 13, her father, Dr William Close, opened a clinic in the Belgian Congo (later Zaire and now Democratic Republic of the Congo) and ran it for 16 years. During most of that time, the Close children lived alternately in Africa and at boarding schools in Switzerland. Dr William Close was the personal physician and close friend of African dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Besides being Mobutu’s private physician, he was appointed chief doctor of the national army and helped control the spread of the deadly Ebola epidemic that affected Zaire in 1976. She likes to keep all her costumes after the completion of a movie. She was hired to dub all of Andie MacDowell’s dialogue in the 1984 movie, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, because former model MacDowell had such a heavy US southern accent. In 1984, she became the third actor to receive an Oscar, Emmy and Tony nomination in the same calendar year (for, respectively, The Big Chill, Something About Amelia and The Real Thing). Her performance as Alex Forrest in 1987’s Fatal Attraction was ranked Number Seven on the American Film Institute’s list of The Greatest Screen Heroes and Villains. She was the fourth choice to play the role of Alex in Fatal Attraction. Those chosen ahead of her were: Debra Winger, Barbara Hershey and Miranda Richardson. Sharon Stone also auditioned for the role. She is a fervent dog lover, and writes a blog called Lively Licks for fetchdog.com, where she occasionally interviews other celebrities about their canine friends. She lives in Manhattan’s glitzy Beresford Apartment building (northwest corner of 81st Street and Central Park West), which is also the residence of Jerry Seinfeld, Diana Ross, and several other celebrities.
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APRIL/MAY 2012
was very much thinking of theatre, not of movies. I was New Yorkoriented, and that’s as much a theatre town as a movie town. It was an exciting time to start acting back then for my generation of actors, and I always had a very strong sense of what I was attracted to. It goes without saying, that the work starts on the page – not necessarily just the character I’m playing, but the overall story arc, how it’s written, and so on.” For her first three movies, The World According to Garp (1982), The Big Chill (1983) and The Natural (1984), Close was Oscar-nominated consecutively for best supporting actress. She modestly says she was “lucky to get good choices” early on in her film career rather than, as she so succinctly puts it, “have to do a piece of crap that I hate but need to do”. Along the way, she allows, “I think I haven’t compromised too much. Plus, the things that I thought were good at the time, but which for various reasons didn’t work out, ended up being great learning experiences.” A finger-tap lands on my shoulder. As is the case with Hollywood royalty engaged in promotional duties at a film festival, time is at a premium, and so we have about two minutes left to wrap things up. I can’t waste the opportunity, however, to ask Close – albeit briefly – about two of her film roles for which she was Oscar-
Hollywood royalty – Glenn Close on the red carpet at the 2012 Oscars, above, and in Dublin at the film festival’s screening of Albert Nobbs, above right.
nominated for best actress: that of Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (1987), and Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Have these roles somehow defined her in the public eye? “I’m not sure, really,” she avers, “but what they might have done is to make casting people or directors a little bit more inflexible in how they would think of me in a role. I mean, nobody would ever have cast me in Albert Nobbs, which is why I had to cast myself. In relation to certain roles, that can be limiting because with films, in particular, so much of it is about image. “You have me as Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons, you have me as Cruella de Vil in the 101 Dalmatians movies, Alex in Fatal Attraction, and you have me as Patty Hewes in the television show Damages. Many casting people would look at those and never dream of me as somebody as fragile as Albert Nobbs. That can be detrimental, but only if you allow it to be.” Could she have gone the marquee-movie way, perhaps, and signed up for blockbuster after blockbuster? Close shakes her head. “I’m not sure that I fit the marquee-movie mode, to be honest. Essentially, you’re talking about movies that make a lot of money, and there aren’t too many women in my profession that make that kind of money. Julia Roberts did at one point, and Demi Moore at another time. Those women are usually in their thirties when that happens, but that wasn’t my career path. “Do I mind? Not at all – sometimes it’s down to no more than the right parts being in the right place at the right point, and that doesn’t happen all the time.” Albert Nobbs is released in Ireland on April 27, 2012.