Glenn Close

Glenn Close, born in 1947, American stage and motion-picture actor of wide range and striking presence, often cast in strong, sensual roles. Close was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, where her father was an eminent surgeon. After specializing in drama at college she made her 1974 Broadway debut in the William Congreve play Love for Love—taking the lead role when British actress Mary Ure dropped out. 

Major stage roles in plays by William Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams followed. Close also appeared in a Broadway musical, Barnum (1981), which earned her a Tony Award, and in Tom Stoppard’s drama about the nature of love, The Real Thing. Her first film was The World According to Garp (1982), in which she played the hero’s mother, a character older than herself, and won the first of several Academy Award nominations. Her looks, which have been described as plain or beautiful but never pretty, puzzled casting directors but saved her from typecasting. At once feisty and serene, tough and vulnerable, she played one of the 30ish ex-radicals in The Big Chill (1983), the patient girlfriend of Robert Redford in The Natural (1984), and a defense lawyer falling for a possible killer in The Jagged Edge (1985).

Two subsequent roles as femmes fatales—the spurned lover of Fatal Attraction (1987) and the cool, calculating French aristocrat of Dangerous Liaisons (1988)—fixed Close’s public image although they used barely a fraction of her range. She received Academy Award nominations for both roles. She brought a mature sensuality to Gertrude in Italian director Franco Zeffirelli’s film of Hamlet (1990) and appeared as an opera star in Meeting Venus (1991). Close returned to Broadway as Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of Sunset Boulevard (1993)—again in a role beyond her years—before playing the part of another villainess, Cruella DeVil, in Disney’s live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians (1996) and its sequel 102 Dalmatians (2000). Close has also appeared in Robert Altman’s Cookie’s Fortune (1999), Rose Troche’s The Safety of Objects (2001), and Frank Oz’s The Stepford Wives (2004). For television, she played Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter (2003), for which she won a best actress Golden Globe; Captain Monica Rawling in The Shield (2005); and the devious lawyer Patty Hewes in Damages (2007), which brought a second Golden Globe win.