Glenn Up Close: Motherhood, Aging and Power
06.05.2022 - 19:17
/ glamour.com
By The night before I was due to meet Glenn Close, I didn’t sleep well. Call it nerves or fear—there’s nothing like preparing to interview an actor who has been nominated eight times for an Oscar and won as many Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards—but multiple times in the early hours, I woke sweatily to flashes of Glenn Close as Patty Hewes from Damages, Joan Castleman from The Wife, Albert from Albert Nobbs, Olivia Pace from Le Divorce (obscure, but a personal favorite), Alex Forrest from Fatal Attraction, and Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmations.
Strong, powerful, complex, and oftentimes biting, intimidating women.It was hard not to imagine that the one woman who was drawn to play them all wasn’t going to be the sum of her parts, quite literally.Glenn Close in some of her iconic roles. From top left (clockwise): As Albert Nobbs, Joan Castleman, Cruella de Vil, Alex Forrest, Patty Hewes, Alex Forrest again, and Olivia Pace.Of course she isn’t.
Close is beguiling, thoughtful, funny, and also reflective, as she looks back on her own troubled childhood and its relationship to her own career. “When you feel powerless, maybe you are more attracted to people with power,” she says, “and maybe that’s helped me, [even] though I’ve always really not liked the idea that acting is like a psychiatrist’s couch.” And yet the pull of complex, powerful women continues to exert itself on Close.
The reason she’s speaking to me today is to promote the second season of Tehran, the acclaimed Apple+ thriller following Tamar Rabinyan, a Mossad agent who finds herself trapped after a botched mission in Iran. Close plays the newly created role of Marjan Montazeri, a renowned psychologist, undercover agent, and Tamar’s apparent
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