Among actresses of a certain age, there's no one but Susan Sarandon who can rival Glenn Close for career vitality. After triumphing on Broadway in Sunset Boulevard, Close returns to a starring screen role as the biggest bitch in motion picture history, Cruella de Vil, in 101 Dalmatians. And she does a cameo as the first Lady in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! for good measure.
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Right away when I meet Glenn Close, I realize that not just her career, but everything about her is a surprise. For one thing, she's tiny--small-framed and just a shade over a hundred pounds. How can this be? Onscreen, she always seems so imposing. I think of her plotting with John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons or seducing Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction--the word "waif" does not come to mind. Close is also gorgeous. I'm used to hearing her described as someone who's tremendously talented, but not sexy enough to cast as "the girl." Trust me on this: anyplace else in the world, anyplace sane, Close would be considered a stunner.
I settle in with Close in the library of her home in upstate New York, which she shares with her eight-year-old daughter, Annie, and Steve Beers, who she met when he was the head carpenter for her Broadway hit Sunset Boulevard. On the shelf across the room sit three Tonys (for Death and the Maiden, The Real Thing and Sunset Boulevard), and an Emmy (for Serving in Silence: The Marguerite Cammermeyer Story). Close hasn't won any of the five Oscars she's been nominated for (The World According to Garp, The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction and Dangerous Liaisons), or any of the Grammys she's been nominated for (the album from The Real Thing and a couple of children's recordings for Rabbit Ears Productions), but there's room on the shelves for those, too.
''I can't think of anyone in history who's been nominated in all these arenas," I say.
Close thinks about it for a good minute or two. "Maybe Rita Moreno?" she asks with a chuckle.
What a career Close has had. She didn't start acting in films until she was 35. Garp wasn't just the first film we noticed her in... it was her first film! In the 14 years since then, she's been in a string of remarkable movies and in between she's done remarkable television--besides Serving in Silence, she starred in the beloved Hallmark Hall of Fame special Sarah, Plain and Tall, plus its sequel, Skylark. Then, in the face of everyone's doubt and Faye Dunaway's dismay, she stunned both coasts with a Tony Award-winning star turn in Sunset Boulevard.
Now she's playing the most demented bitch ever to appear on-screen, Cruella de Vil, in the live-action version of the Disney animated classic 101 Dalmatians. "'I found a great quote from you when I was reading up for this interview," I tell her, leafing through pages of background material. '"When you were talking about what a shrew Alex Forrest was in Fatal Attraction, and how cruel the Marquise de Merteuil was in Dangerous Liaisons, you said. 'I can't think of a role that has this kind of size, unless you're talking about Cruella de Vil.' Is this a role that you've always been dying to play?"
"Let me see that." says Close, grabbing the papers out of my hand. "My God, I had no idea Cruella de Vil was even in my consciousness! Surely 101 Dalmatians was one of the scariest books I ever read, but no, I didn't think I was working up towards playing Cruella."
"It seems like you're always playing the Saint or the Sinner. In your first films, The World According to Garp and The Big Chill, you were an earth mother. Then, after Fatal Attraction, you became the man-eater..."
Close is laughing. "It's true," she admits.
"People will never forget that scene in The Big Chill where you're sitting on the floor in the bathroom, naked and sobbing..."
"Thank God for that scene. It set her up as someone with real emotion, real pain,"
"Personally, I'll never forget the scene where your character kisses her husband [Kevin Kline], and then asks him to go have sex with her best friend so the friend can get pregnant. I thought that said a hell of a lot about who that character was. I forgot how cool the early '80s were till I watched that again."
Close leans back and takes a deep breath. "I haven't seen The Big Chill for so long, but the further I get from that time in history, the cooler it seems to me, too."
"You were nominated for an Academy Award for your first three films... "
"I lost Garp to Jessica Lange in Tootsie, so that didn't make me feel bad. Then I lost for The Big Chill to Linda Hunt. I remember that I didn't have a speech prepared, because I was just going to get up there and thank everyone--I mean every single person involved in the project. Those are the speeches that people just hate. But Linda Hunt won, and she got up there and said. 'This is like water from the moon.' And I thought, holy shit, what a great thing to say. I would never have said something so great. For The Natural, I honestly think they should have nominated the lighting guy [instead], because I was backlit the whole time like I was an angel--all that was missing was a halo!"
"The Stone Boy, which you did with Robert Duvall, sort of got lost in the shuffle."
"Yes, it did. Duvall and I play parents of two sons, and our youngest boy accidentally shoots our oldest son when they're out rabbit hunting. And..."
I'm laughing, thinking of Close cooking the bunny in Fatal Attraction.
"I know. I know," she says, laughing too. "Rabbits are a strong theme in my films. Thank God Cruella doesn't want to wear a rabbit coat."
"Jagged Edge is one of my favorite films. I'm totally wild for Jeff Bridges," I admit.
"Me too," Close says.
"I watched it again last night, and I found something very strange. The movie is about a man who slashes his wife to death with a jagged-edged knife. And the murder in the film took place on June 12, 1985. Coincidence?" Close looks confused.
"June 12th,'' I repeat. "The same date that Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were killed, slashed to death with a knife."
The color has drained from Close's face. "Are you sure?"
"Positive. And the husband in the film gets away with it. How many times do you think O.J. has seen Jagged Edge?"
"Stop it, you're really scaring me," says Close, so I do.
"Maxie was your first flop."
"You know, I played two roles in that film, a modern woman and the spirit, that inhabits her body. I think now that it was a mistake to play both characters. They should have used a young, coltish girl to play the spirit, so you would have seen the two of us trying to come together."
"Glenn, believe me, they could have used a real colt and it wouldn't have made a difference. But then came your breakthrough role as Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction. This was the first truly sexy woman you ever played. She is so etched into the national psyche that it's a miracle that men still cheat on their wives ..."
"You know, everyone else thought of Alex as a maniac, but I thought of her as damaged. I thought it was so obvious, when she says to Michael Douglas, 'If you can't fuck me, you might as well just hit me ...' that she was obviously an abused woman. I figured that people would have some sympathy for her. Shows you what I know."
"I remember when I read that script, it had such a better ending than the one you finally filmed ..."
"Don't get me started," says Close. "The original ending was a gorgeous piece of film noir. She kills herself, but makes sure that his prints are all over the knife, and he gets arrested. He knows he didn't do it, but he's going to jail anyway. But audiences wanted some kind of cathartic ending, so we went back months later and shot the ending that's in the movie now."
"You were nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Who'd you lose to?" "Cher," says Close, with no apparent irony.
"Cher? In Moonstruck?"
"Yes. And I understood it. Because those awards are always for so much more than that one film. And Cher has this mystique, and she had made a sort of comeback, and people were rooting for her."
"So then you played the Marquise in Dangerous Liaisons."
"We filmed in France." says Close. "And I had given birth to Annie seven weeks before we started preparing for the film. For the first time in my life, I had these great breasts. It'll never happen again, but for one brief, shining season, I had the most incredible breasts. James Acheson, the costume designer, who won the Oscar this year for Restoration, did the costumes, and I just loved it because they pushed my breasts up and made me have cleavage. I guess I should be saying something more intellectual about the film, but I just remembered how great it felt to have those breasts."
"Don't worry, we don't push for the intellectual. Anyone who wants to talk about their breasts is welcome to do just that. Then you sort of went back to saintly in Immediate Family."
"In that film, James Woods and I adopt the baby of Mary Stuart Masterson and Kevin Dillon, but then they lake it back. The film was about open adoption, where you meet the mother of the child before she has the child. But I think a lot of people thought it was about surrogate motherhood, which had been getting a lot of bad press."
"Sounds plausible." I say, "but I think the reason the movie failed is that nobody could imagine anybody even considering letting James Woods adopt their child."
Close rolls her eyes. "Could be," she says with a giggle.
"So then you played Mel Gibson's mother in Hamlet. She was certainly one of the most deranged mothers in stage or screen history."
"It just struck me that Gertrude was a woman that these three amazing men are totally enthralled with, Hamlet, Claudius, and the ghost, her husband. And because Mel and I are so close in age [nine years apart], I figured that I was the political bride, brought to the court at age 12, marrying this warrior king, and she probably had a baby at 14 or so. And it's like she had grown up with her child, and it was all very sensual to her. And she's not a rocket scientist. She's a very sensual woman who had never had a really full sexual experience because her husband was so old, he was more like a father figure. So when Claudius comes into her life it's like, wow, and she's just quivering. And she takes touching her son for granted, because that's the way it's always been. But he's become a man."
"I remember that scene where she kisses him on the lips and he just gets so uncomfortable..."
"Yeah. And she doesn't get it."
"Then you played Sunny von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune. For most of the picture, you're lying in a coma! It's not the kind of part that usually wins raves, but you really brought her to life, so to speak..."
"Thank you. But I take issue with my performance. If I could do it over, I would play Sunny not so tightly wound. I think I played her wrong, but of course I didn't know it at the time."
"Hook?" I say, holding up my notes. "I don't remember you in Hook."
At that exact moment, Close's daughter Annie pops her head into the library.
"Come here, sweetie," says Close, introducing us and hugging Annie. After a little chit-chat, Annie settles into a lounge chair and starts writing in her journal.
''You can stay here if you're very quiet." says Close. "Where were we?"
"Hook..."
"I'm in the scene where Dustin [Hoffman] first comes on, and he's haranguing the pirates and I'm the pirate that they throw into the boo box."
"What's a boo box?" asks Annie before I can.
"Remember the box that they put the scorpions into?"
"Why?" asks Annie, beating me to the punch again.
"To punish me. I don't know, he thinks I betrayed him."
"Do you die?" asks Annie, and I'm thinking she might be better at this than I am.
"Well I guess in the boo box I didn't have a good time. But it was all pretend, honey. It wasn't real."
Annie rolls her eyes. "I know that, mommy, but did you die?"
"No," says Close. "That's one movie that I didn't die in."
Silence, while I wait for Annie to ask about Meeting Venus. When she doesn't, I do.
"It was a great experience," says Close. "I went to Budapest and the director was the great Istvan Szabo, and the cast was kind of the cream of different Eastern European and European countries."
I'm rolling my eyes. "Boring" is the one word I come up with.
"Well." says Close, unrepentant, "it was a great experience."
"OK, fine. But you really do have some explaining to do about The House of the Spirits."
"I know, I know. It was a very tricky character. The truth is. I was miscast,"
"You were all miscast..."
"I agree. It should have been Hispanics, and it should have been all about the passion. It was too cold. In the book, these people were highly emotional--always screaming and loving and haling. But Bille [August, the director] didn't like screams, so nobody screamed."
Annie has been listening to all this with rapt attention. Then the door opens and Steve Beers comes in. There's talk about who will drive Annie to her riding lesson, a few kisses, and then they're off.
"He's cute, your boyfriend," I tell Close, as if she hasn't noticed,
"My fiancé," she sighs, holding out her hand to show off a small but pretty diamond ring.
"You're getting married again?" I remind Close that she's been married twice before and has often said that she's never going to do it again.
"I know, I know," she says. "But, yes, we're going to get married."
"Third time's the charm," I say. We both knock wood, and turn our attention to The Paper, Ron Howard's film about a New York City newspaper.
"I love Ron Howard, he's a wonderful director, incredibly prepared. But I have to criticize my performance in that movie. It all took place in one day. My character was having a bad day, so she's having a bad day throughout the whole movie. But this was a comedy, and I think I was too serious, too dense. Yes, I think that describes my failure there."
"You had a small pan in Mary Reilly..." I begin. This should be interesting.
"I called Stephen Frears, who had directed me in Dangerous Liaisons, and I said, 'C'mon, everyone from Dangerous is in this film, I want a part.' I felt left out. So he gave me the part of a bordello owner, and I thought it would take a week--go to London, have some fun, and come home. But it was hard. They wanted this Liverpudlian accent and Stephen was great, because he kept pushing me to do stuff that I didn't know how to do. The character, I think, was quite interesting. But she's in only three scenes."
"Well, those three scenes were not nearly enough to save it. I'm used to Julia Roberts being dreadful, but John Malkovich was certainly giving her a run for her money in the dreadful department."
"Oh, I don't think so ..."
"Sorry, but you're wrong. It was a complete fiasco."
Close sits quietly. There is absolutely no way that she's about to say anything negative about her Hollywood cohorts. Suddenly it occurs to me that Close managed to have a part in both of Julia Roberts's two worst movies, Hook and Mary Reilly. But I know I'm not going to get anywhere with this particular surprise of Close's career, so I go on.
"You also do a cameo in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!"
"Oh, I had a ball. I play the first lady to Jack Nicholson's president."
"What a thought. Jack Nicholson as president..."
"And my character is a compulsive ditz who's much more interested in redecorating the While House than what's going on in the world. And the Martians are attacking. That wonderful Natalie Portman is our daughter, and she's very alienated--we're a most dysfunctional family. A lot of what I do is just watch the Martians on television in the oval office. And one time we were sitting there and I had tea and all Tim said was, 'I want this to be a spit take.'"
"What's a spit take?"
Close pretends to spit all over me. "That's what Tim wanted, for you to see the surprise on my face and I just spit the tea all over the place."
"I bet Cruella de Vil would never do a spit take."
"Not on her life, Cruella's the devil. She has no redeeming qualities about her. I mean, people ask me if she's like Norma Desmond [Close's character in Sunset Boulevard]. Absolutely not, She's at the other end of the spectrum, because Norma was this fragile creature, and Cruella is a manipulator, gleefully evil, and getting a great kick out of being destructive. I found it quite sobering to have to follow in the footsteps of that wonderful animated creature, because I think she really is an icon of sorts. And her style is so fantastic. Cruella makes Norma look like something from the Salvation Army. Endangered species are her favorite, so she has this snow leopard cape. I modeled my voice on Joanna Lumley, the wonderful British actress [from "Absolutely Fabulous"]. It's a slightly nasal, upper-class voice. I think your first instinct is to distort, but what really worked, in the end, was to try to make her basically as glamorous as possible. Because she's the head of a house of fashion. And then to just let the character distort the face, not do it with any kind of makeup. I'd have to say that Cruella is one of the most wonderful characters I've ever played. I think she's going to scare the shit out of people."
"Did you have to think a lot about skinning puppies to get into your role?"
Close laughs at my question, "Annie was over there with me [in London] for the shoot, and although Cruella doesn't have a lot of scenes with the dogs, there were 200 dalmatian puppies on the set. Both the Dalmatian Society of England and the production department were very concerned that the dogs be treated right. So to go in and see the puppies, which we liked to do a lot, you had to walk through a chemical bath and wash your hands."
On the way out of Close's house, after we finish talking, I notice a very strange thing in her kitchen: the knife from Fatal Attraction is framed and hanging in a spot that's hard to miss.
"What's with the knife?" I ask, thinking immediately of puppies, rabbits, men and other living creatures.
"It's the first thing that people usually see when they come in the house," says Close with a wicked smile. "I want them to know just who they're dealing with."
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Martha Frankel interviewed Bruce Willis for the August issue of Movieline.