Best Known As: The crazy, jilted lover from Fatal Attraction
An elegant star of stage and screen, Glenn Close is probably best known for her portrayals of villains, from the crazed lover in Fatal Attraction (1987) to Cruella De Vil in the live-action version of 101 Dalmations (1996). A 12th generation New Englander, Close grew up in Africa and Switzerland, but finished high school in the U.S. She studied acting at the College of William and Mary and made her New York stage debut in 1974. Her movie debut, playing Robin Williams's mother in The World According to Garp (1982), earned her an Oscar nomination. It was the first of a string of critically acclaimed performances during the 1980s, including four more Oscar nominations for The Big Chill (1983, with Jeff Goldblum), The Natural (1984, with Robert Redford), Fatal Attraction (1987, with Michael Douglas) and Dangerous Liaisons (1988, with John Malkovich). Close has had equal success on the stage and in television. She is the winner of three Tony Awards -- The Real Thing (1984), Death and the Maiden (1992) and Sunset Blvd. (1995) -- and has received many Emmy nominations (she won a Best Actress Emmy for 1995's Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story). Her other television work includes one season (2005) on The Shield (starring Michael Chiklis) and the lead role the 2007 series, Damages.
A talented singer, Close traditionally sings the national anthem for the New York Mets home opening-day game... In the movies, she has been the U.S. vice president (1997's Air Force One, with Harrison Ford) and the First Lady (1996's Mars Attacks, with Jack Nicholson).
(born March 19, 1947, Greenwich, Conn., U.S.) U.S. actress. She made her Broadway debut in 1974 and later starred in Barnum (1980), The Real Thing (1984, Tony Award), and Death and the Maiden (1992, Tony Award). Her film debut in The World According to Garp (1982) was followed by roles in films such as The Natural (1984), Fatal Attraction (1987), and Dangerous Liaisons (1989). She also starred in the acclaimed television film Sarah, Plain and Tall (1991) and later returned to Broadway in Sunset Boulevard (1995, Tony Award).
Close, Glenn (b. 1947), actress. She was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, the daughter of a surgeon who took her with him on his missionary work to Africa. After graduating from the College of William and Mary, Close toured as a folk singer before going to New York and making her legit debut in 1974. She was featured in plays and musicals on and Off Broadway throughout the 1970s, first gaining some attention for her desperate Irene St. Claire, who enlists Sherlock Holmes's help in removing a family curse in The Crucifer of Blood (1978). Close also shone as the level‐headed wife Charity in Barnum and won Tony Awards for playing the actress‐activist Annie in The Real Thing (1984), the survivor Paulina from a dictatorial regime in Death and the Maiden (1992), and the loony silent screen star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1994).
Career Highlights: Dangerous Liaisons, Reversal of Fortune, Something About Amelia
First Major Screen Credit: Too Far to Go (1979)
Biography
With elegantly aristocratic features and a career marked by versatility and critical acclaim, Glenn Close is one of Hollywood's most celebrated actresses. Her acclaim is not limited to the film world, as she has also found great success in various television and stage productions, most notably Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway musical version of Sunset Boulevard and in the acclaimed 1991 made-for-TV movie Sarah, Plain and Tall (which was successful enough to have two sequels, Skylark and Sarah, Plain and Tall: Winter's End.
Born in Greenwich, CT, on March 19, 1947, Close grew up in Africa and Switzerland while her father, a doctor, maintained a clinic in the Belgian Congo. As a high school student at Greenwich's Rosemary Hall, the actress organized a touring rep-theater group and performed a number of folk-singing gigs. After graduating from the College of William and Mary, where she studied anthropology and acting, Close appeared in regional theater and then made her New York stage bow in 1974's Love for Love. Her theater work led to her first film role, when director George Roy Hill, after seeing her in the Broadway musical Barnum, cast her in The World According to Garp (1982). Close won the role of the protagonist's political-activist mother, a portrayal made all the more interesting by the fact that the actress was only five years older than Robin Williams, the actor playing her son. Close earned an Oscar nomination for her work, thus catalyzing the acclaim that was to surround much of her subsequent career.
Close worked steadily through the remainder of the 1980s, winning Oscar nominations for her divergent performances in The Big Chill (1983), The Natural (1984), and Fatal Attraction (1987). In the last of these films, she all but caused the screen to combust with her fearsome portrayal of a woman who gets very, very angry with Michael Douglas. As evidence of her remarkable versatility, Close avoided being typecast as similarly psychotic women, going on to win another Oscar nomination the next year for her devastatingly wicked performance in Dangerous Liaisons.
Further acclaim followed with her role as Sunny Von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune (1990), and Close spent the next decade turning in consistently strong performances in films both good and bad, from the critically and commercially lambasted Mary Reilly (1994) to the all-star Mars Attacks! (1996); 101 Dalmatians (1996), in which she got in touch with her inner drag queen as Cruella De Vil; and Air Force One (1997), which featured her as President Harrison Ford's harried Vice President. In 1999, Close took on two very different roles, first lending her voice to the animated Tarzan as the hero's gorilla mother, and then in Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune, in which she was able to explore Southern-style insanity as the terrifically unhinged Camille Orcutt.
In addition to her film work, Close has maintained a television and stage career since the early '80s. Her stage work led to Tony Awards for her turns in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing (1984) and Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden in 1992. She garnered further raves and diva status for her starring role as the legendary Norma Desmond in the 1995 Broadway production of Sunset Boulevard (an excellent singer, Close annually performs the National Anthem for the New York Mets' opening-day game).
On television, she continued to win prestige for performances in Stones for Ibarra (1988), 1991's Sarah, Plain and Tall, in which she starred opposite Christopher Walken, and Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (1995), for which she won an Emmy for her portrayal of the title character. However, it wasn't until 2005 that Close could be seen in a regular series role when she joined the cast of the critically acclaimed FX series The Shield. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
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 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.[4] She was elected to membership in the honor society of Phi Beta Kappa.
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.[5][6] 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.[7]
Personal life
In February 2006, Close married her longtime boyfriend David E. (Evans) 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.[8]
Close is a dog lover and writes a blog for Fetchdog.com, where she interviews other famous people about their relationships with their dogs.[9]
