Glenn Close (born March 19,
1947) is an American
actress and singer of stage and screen, perhaps best
known for her role as deranged stalker Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (1987). She
has been nominated five times for an
Oscar, and has won three
Tonys, an
Obie, four
Emmys, two
Golden Globes, and a
Screen Actors Guild Award.
Biography
Early life and family
Close was
born in Greenwich,
Connecticut
, the daughter of Bettine (née Moore) and William Taliaferro Close, a doctor who
operated a clinic in the Belgian Congo
and served as a personal physician to President Mobutu Sese Seko. Her parents came
from prominent families; her paternal grandfather, Edward Bennett
Close, a stockbroker and director of the
American Hospital Association,
was first married to
Post Cereals'
heiress
Marjorie Merriweather
Post, making Glenn Close a relative of screenwriter/director
Preston Sturges and actress
Dina Merrill. Close is also a second-cousin
once-removed of
Brooke Shields.
Shields's great-grandmother Mary Elsie Moore (wife of
Don Marino
Torlonia, 4th Prince di Civitella-Cesi) was Close's great-aunt,
a sister of Close's maternal grandfather, Charles Arthur
Moore.
In a
speech at Princeton
University
on February 19, 2009, Close credited her early
years for her acting abilities: "I have no doubt that the days I
spent running free in the evocative Connecticut countryside with an
unfettered imagination, playing whatever character our games
demanded, is one of the reasons that acting has always seemed so
natural to me." However, when she was seven years old, her
parents "were seduced into a cult group called
Moral Re-Armament.... Our family was
swallowed up by MRA for 15 years. We moved into a series of
communal centers, and.... struggled to survive the pressures of a
culture that dictated everything about how we lived our lives."
Close
traveled for several years in the mid-to-late 1960s with an MRA
singing group called "Up With People"
and attended Rosemary Hall, a
boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut
. When she was 22, Close broke away from MRA.
"I rebelled and said I wanted to go to college.... Until then, my
life was completely out of my control. I didn't have the tools to
reclaim it.
That reclamation began when I entered
The College
of William and Mary
." It was there in the theater department
that she began to train as a serious actor under Dr. Howard
Scammon. She was elected to membership in the honor society of
Phi Beta Kappa.
Career
Close, who started her professional stage work in 1974 and her film
work in 1982, has had a lengthy career as a versatile actress and
performer. She is remembered for her chilling roles as the scheming
aristocrat The Marquise de Merteuil in
Dangerous Liaisons and as the
psychotic book editor Alex in
Fatal
Attraction. She has been nominated for five
Academy Awards, for
Best Actress in
Dangerous Liaisons and
Fatal Attraction, and for
Best Supporting
Actress in
The
Natural,
The Big
Chill, and
The World According to
Garp, her first film. In 1984, Close starred in the
critically acclaimed drama
Something about Amelia, a Golden
Globe winning television movie about a family destroyed by sexual
abuse. She played the role of
Sunny
von Bülow in the 1990 film
Reversal of Fortune to critical
acclaim.
In the 1990s, Close took on challenging roles on television as
well. She starred in the highly rated presentation of the 1991
Hallmark Hall of Fame drama
Sarah, Plain and Tall
(and its two sequels) and also in the made-for-TV movie
Serving
in Silence: The Margarethe
Cammermeyer Story (1995); from these roles she was
nominated for 8
Emmys (winning one) and 9
Golden Globes (winning one in 2005 and
2007). She also appeared in the newsroom comedy-drama
The Paper (1994), the alien invasion satire
Mars Attacks! (1996, as The
First Lady), the Disney hit
101 Dalmatians (1996, as the
sinister
Cruella de Vil) and it
sequel
102 Dalmatians (2000)
and the blockbuster
Air Force
One (1997), as the trustworthy
vice-president to
Harrison Ford's president. In 2001, she
starred in an elaborate production of
Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic
musical
South
Pacific. In 2005, Close joined the FX crime series
The Shield, in which she played
a no-nonsense precinct captain. Her appearance on the cop drama was
such a success that she is now starring in a new hit series of her
own for 2007,
Damages
(also on
FX) instead of continuing
her character on
The Shield. So far the Academy's Oscar
has eluded her, being nominated several times during the 1980s, but
never being named the winner.
Close has
had an extensive career performing in many Broadway
musicals. One of her most notable roles on stage was
Norma Desmond in the Andrew Lloyd Webber production of
Sunset
Boulevard, for which Close won a Tony award playing the role on Broadway
in
1994. Close was also a guest star, at the Andrew
Lloyd Webber fiftieth birthday party celebration, in the Royal Albert
Hall
in 1998. She appeared as Norma Desmond and
performed songs from
Sunset Boulevard. Close is being
considered to reprise the role of Norma Desmond in the long talked-
about film of
Sunset Boulevard, based on the Andrew Lloyd
Webber musical. The film and cast have not officially been
announced. In addition to
Sunset Boulevard, Close also won
Tony Awards in 1984 for
The
Real Thing and in 1992 for
Death and the Maiden.
Recently, Close performed at Carnegie Hall narrating the violin
concerto
The Runaway Bunny, a concerto for reader, violin
and orchestra, composed and conducted by Glen Roven.
Close won the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a
Drama series for her role in Damages.. Also in 2009, she narrated
the environmental film
Home.
Personal life
In February 2006, Close married her longtime boyfriend
David E. Shaw.
They reside in Scarborough,
Maine
. The actress was previously married to Cabot
Wade (1969–1973) and James Marlas (1984–1987). She has a daughter,
Annie Maude Starke, from her previous relationship with John Starke
that ended in 1991. Close is an avid
New
York Mets fan. She has donated money to election campaigns of
many
Democratic
politicians, including
Hillary
Rodham Clinton,
Howard Dean,
John Edwards and
Barack Obama.
Close is a dog lover and writes a blog for Fetchdog.com, where she
interviews other famous people about their relationships with their
dogs.
Stage productions
Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals
- Rex (Broadway, 1976),
Richard Rodgers-Sheldon Harnick musical about Henry VIII
- Barnum (Charity
Barnum, Broadway, 1980), Cy Coleman
musical about Phineas T. Barnum
- Sunset
Boulevard (Norma Desmond, Broadway, 1994), Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on the
classic 1950 motion picture Sunset Boulevard
- Busker
Alley (Off-Broadway, 2006, one-performance benefit
concert), Sherman Brothers musical
based on the 1938 movie St. Martin's Lane
, directed by Tony
Walton
Broadway plays
Off-Broadway
Tony Awards
Obie Awards
- 1982: Best Actress in a Play - The Singular Life of Albert
Nobbs (WIN)
Filmography
| Documentary |
| Year |
Film |
Role |
Notes |
| 1990 |
Divine Garbo |
Herself |
Greta Garbo documentary |
| 1999 |
The Lady with the Torch |
Herself-host |
The 75th Anniversary of Columbia Pictures |
| 2001 |
Welcome To Hollywood |
Herself |
|
| 2003 |
What I Want My Words To Do To You: Voices From Inside A
Women's Maximum Security Prison |
Herself |
|
| A Closer Walk |
Narrator |
Robert Bilheimer film. AIDS epidemic. |
| 2007 |
Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age |
Herself |
|
| 2009 |
Home |
Narrator |
Yann Arthus-Bertrand
film. |
Other awards
Notes
- New England Historic Genealogical Society
- Conscience and the Congo
- Glenn Close Biography - Yahoo! Movies
- Glenn Close: "Are You Who We Think You
Are?"
- Meryl Streep competes for Sunset Boulevard -
Telegraph
- "Close and Streisand are Desperate for Sunset
Role." contactmusic.com. February 5, 2008
- Opensecrets.org
- [1]fetchdog.com
References
External links
, November 1974)
, December 1985)
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