At 71, Glenn Close says she still feels young

Glenn Close didn’t have Plan B. Growing up in Connecticut, she turned an empty field into her stage. “I always loved pretending that I was other people. As a little girl, I’d roam the countryside acting all day long,” she said. “The only thing was I didn’t want to be my sister’s sidekick anymore. I wanted to have the lead role.”

Six Oscar nominations, three Emmy wins and three Tony statues later, Close has top billing in the new film “The Wife,” in which she plays Joan Castleman, a wife in the shadows who has spent her life sacrificing. She examines her choices during a trip to Stockholm with her husband (Jonathan Pryce) who is there to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The film, which is expected to come to Las Vegas in September, also stars Close’s daughter Annie Starke, who plays Joan at a younger age.

Review-Journal: You live outside of New York City. What is a perfect Sunday for you?

Glenn Close: I’m home. Hiding with a good book or taking a bike ride to the beach to play a game of beach bocce. I’m around the people I love. That’s a perfect day when I’m not working.

Tell us about “The Wife,” which is gathering Oscar buzz.

It’s an incredibly intimate portrait of a marriage and what’s not said. It’s about compromises and the costs one pays for certain decisions. My character fell in love with her professor, who wanted to be a great writer. She supports him when it comes to his goals in life, which is such a common story for many women.

What was it like to work with your daughter on this film?

I went out of town when she was filming. I wanted to give her some space. She’s so naturally talented. I knew that she didn’t want her mom there when she was filming. This was about her doing her role. I did treasure our time talking about how she would establish this character at a younger age, which then informed how I played her.

Has there been any progress in women over 40 finding great roles?

It’s still difficult with film when you’re a woman. On TV, it’s changed and that’s a win. As far as big studio movies, I’d love to be proven wrong. I do have a good choice of roles because I do a lot of indie movies. It’s ironic that there aren’t more roles for women my age. We’re at the peak of our power.

Early in your career, you watched Dick Cavett do a rare televised interview with Katharine Hepburn. What did you learn?

She just mesmerized me. We both came from Connecticut and our fathers were doctors. I admired that she seemed to know who she was and cut her own path through Hollywood. I listened to Katharine Hepburn say, “No regrets.” When it was over, I said, “OK, you want to do this, then do it with no regrets.”

You’ve starred in so many classic movies. What are your memories of “The World According to Garp?”

My character, Jenny, was a New Englander, so I basically decided to be my grandmother who had a straight back and a wonderful way of talking. My first scene was holding a grocery bag. Beloved Robin (Williams) was so wonderful. I was new to film acting and didn’t know you had a little mic on, which meant you didn’t have to shout your lines.

“The Big Chill?”

The entire cast rehearsed for a month at Columbia Pictures, which is unheard of now. We also played this game since most of us hadn’t done many films. We’d go out and see someone on the lot and we’d say, “Oh my God, there’s Charles Bronson. He’s looking at us.” It was just a guy who looked like Charles Bronson! It was a great way for the cast to bond.

You’ve said that playing Marquise de Merteuil in 1988’s “Dangerous Liaisons” was a career milestone.

The key to her was that she was a brilliant woman who was brought up in a convent. When she got out, she was expected to be married off and become some man’s property. She was to be at the whim of males. But she was so astute and smart that she observed how things worked. She made it her goal in life to never be used. In some ways, she was a woman acting like a man in a man’s world. Then she gets punished for it. I seem to play a lot of women who are punished.

And the iconic Alex Forrest in 1987’s “Fatal Attraction?”

Men still come up and say, “You scared the (expletive) out of me.” And it was 30 years ago that we made the film. I don’t believe Alex was evil. She was tragic. I wanted to make her as human as possible and try to understand her behavior, even if the audience didn’t understand it.

You boiled a bunny!

I did so much research for that role. I was fascinated by every aspect of Alex’s world including the infamous boiling bunny scene. Was the bunny boiling possible? Then I gave the script to two different psychiatrists and asked, “What creates this type of behavior?” I really wanted to explore this woman from every angle.

What character(s) haunted you after the fact?

One is Norma Desmond when I first did it on stage (in “Sunset Boulevard”), and the second is Alex Forrest. Those women stay in my mind. In general, you have to go through a mourning period if you deeply examined a character and have grown a love for her. All of a sudden, she’s not there anymore. You have to slowly let it go. But that hasn’t been for every character.

You’re 71. Does it feel like seven decades have passed?

I still feel like I’m 18 and just starting.