Most of us don’t live our lives in accordance with a governing metaphor, but Glenn Close does. The 78-year-old was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, a town in the north‑east of the US that, to the actor’s enduring irritation, telegraphs “smug affluence” to other Americans. In fact, Close’s background is more complicated than that, rooted in a childhood that was wild and free but also traumatic, and in an area of New England in which her family goes back generations. “I grew up on those great stone walls of New England,” says the actor, chin out, gimlet-eyed – Queen Christina at the prow of a ship. “Some of them were 6ft tall and 250 years old! I have a book called Sermons in Stone and it says at one point that more energy and hours ran into building the New England stone walls than the pyramids.”
If the walls are an image Close draws on for strength, they might also serve as shorthand for the journalist encountering her at interview. Close appears in a London hotel suite today in a military-style black suit, trim, compact, and with a small white dog propped up on a chair beside her. For the span of our conversation, the actor’s warmth and friendliness combine with a reserve so practised and precise that the presence of the dog in the room feels, unfairly perhaps, like a handy way for Close to burn through a few minutes of the interview with some harmless guff about dog breeds. (The dog is called Pip, which is short for “Sir Pippin of Beanfield”. He is a purebred Havanese and “they’re incredibly intelligent”. Most dog owners in the US have the emotional support paperwork necessary to get them on a plane but, says Close, laughing, “That’s really what he is!”)
Anyway, none of this matters – neither the reserve nor the canine distraction – because, of course, Glenn Close is completely irresistible. How could she not be? The intensity of her most famous roles, from Alex Forrest, the “bunny boiler” in Fatal Attraction (1987), to her maniacal Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians (1996), to Joan Castleman, the seething protagonist of The Wife (2017), makes her that rare thing, a movie star who is also beloved as a character actor. Long before A-list actors made a stampede towards television, Close was churning out five seasons of Damages, the great New York legal drama that ran from 2007, and her choice of projects remains improbably broad. After our meeting, she will fly to Berlin to film the sixth instalment of The Hunger Games, in which she will play Drusilla Sickle, then return to London to film Maud, a drama for Channel 4, all the while appearing on Disney+ in Ryan Murphy’s new schlock divorce drama, All’s Fair, in which she stars alongside – broad church, indeed – Kim Kardashian. Close, who has been known to lobby for a role after she has been turned down for it, has never won an Oscar, and if it’s a weird glitch in Hollywood history, from certain angles the omission works in her favour. Taken alongside the impossible grandness of a Meryl Streep or Cate Blanchett, Close remains the more nimble and interesting performer.
