Glenn Close

Close has been married three times. She was married to Cabot Wade from 1969 to 1971, James Constantine Marlas from 1984 to 1987, and David Shaw from 2006 to 2015.

She has a daughter, Annie Starke, from her relationship with producer John Starke. Close also co-founded the mental-health organization Bring Change to Mind in 2010 and has served as its chairperson, with the campaign focused on reducing stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness.

Close was born and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her father, William Taliaferro Close, was a prominent surgeon who opened a medical clinic in the Belgian Congo when she was 13, and Close spent several years in Africa and at boarding schools in Switzerland.

After returning to Connecticut, she attended Rosemary Hall. She toured Europe and the United States with the musical group Up with People before enrolling at the College of William & Mary in 1970. She graduated in 1974 with a degree in drama and a Phi Beta Kappa key.

Close began her professional stage career in 1974 and made her Broadway debut that year. Her performance in Barnum earned her a Tony Award nomination in 1980 and helped bring her to the attention of director George Roy Hill.

Hill cast her as Jenny Fields in The World According to Garp (1982), her film debut. The role earned Close an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and established her as a major screen performer. She received further supporting-actress Oscar nominations for The Big Chill (1983) and The Natural (1984).

Close received Best Actress Academy Award nominations for playing Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (1987) and the scheming Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons (1988), in which she starred alongside John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer. She also received a Golden Globe nomination for Fatal Attraction and a BAFTA Film Award nomination for Dangerous Liaisons.

Her later film roles included appearances in Hamlet, Reversal of Fortune, The House of the Spirits, and The Paper. She played Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians (1996), the vice president in Air Force One (1997), and a leader of an intergalactic police force in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).

Close cowrote and starred in Albert Nobbs (2011), playing a woman who disguises herself as a man to find work in 19th-century Ireland. She received another Academy Award nomination for the performance. Her role as Joan Castleman in The Wife (2017) brought her an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award, and she later appeared in Hillbilly Elegy (2020).

Close won her first Primetime Emmy Award for the television film Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (1995). She also won a Golden Globe for playing Eleanor of Aquitaine in the television film The Lion in Winter (2003).

From 2007 to 2012, Close starred in the drama series Damages as Patty Hewes, a high-powered attorney with Machiavellian tendencies. The role earned her two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award.

Close won Tony Awards for The Real Thing in 1984 and Death and the Maiden in 1992. In 1995 she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for playing Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard.

She returned to Broadway in the 2014-15 revival of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance, playing an imposing matriarch. She reprised Norma Desmond in a 2017 Broadway revival of Sunset Boulevard. Her honors include three Tony Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, an Obie, and induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2016.