Award-Winning Actress, Mental Health Advocate & Co-Founder, Bring Change to Mind
Glenn Close: Biography at a Glance
- Glenn Close is an eight-time Academy Award-nominated actress whose work has graced the stage, screen, and television
- For her role in The Wife, Close won a Golden Globe, SAG, Independent Spirit, and Critics Choice Award as “Best Actress,” as well as multiple nominations for her performance.
- Additional film credits include The World According to Garp, The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, Jagged Edge, 101 Dalmatians and 102 Dalmatians, and Guardians of the Galaxy, among many others
- Close and her sister, Jessie, founded Bring Change to Mind, which creates multimedia campaigns, curates storytelling movements, and develops youth programs to remove the stigma around mental health.
- In her speaking engagements, Close brings her life in film to the stage, with stories behind some of her greatest roles, and reflections on how by continuously reinventing herself, she has made for a lasting, illustrious career.
- As a mental health advocate, Close also shares personal stories of her own and others' struggles with mental illness and discusses ways we can all end the stigma.
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Biography
Seven-time Academy Award-nominated actress Glenn Close is an internationally acclaimed performer whose work has graced stage, screen, and television. For her performance in the title role of The Wife, Close won 2019 Golden Globe, SAG, Independent Spirit and Critics Choice Awards as “Best Actress,” as well as nominations from BAFTA, the Gotham Awards, and the London Film Critics, along with the seventh Oscar nomination.
Close will next be seen in the film Hillbilly Elegy, directed by Ron Howard from Vanessa Taylor’s screenplay, based on J.D. Vance’s bestselling memoir, co-starring Amy Adams and Gabriel Basso.
Close made her feature film debut in George Roy Hill's The World According to Garp, earning her awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review as well as her first Academy Award nomination. She was subsequently Oscar-nominated for The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction (also Golden Globe nomination) and Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons (for which she was also a BAFTA nominee).
Close received her sixth Academy Award nomination in 2012, along with Golden Globe and SAG nominations, for Albert Nobbs. She wrote the screenplay with (Man Booker prize-winning novelist) John Banville. Close was also a producer on the film and composed the lyrics for the Golden Globe and World Soundtrack-nominated song, “Lay Your Head Down.” For Albert Nobbs, she received the Irish Film and Television Award (IFTA) as “Best Foreign Actress,” was voted “Best Actress” at the 2011 Tokyo International Film Festival and was honored for her performance by the San Sebastian Film Festival (Donostia Award), Hollywood Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival and the Palm Springs Film Festival.
Her additional film credits include Richard Marquand's Jagged Edge, Barbet Schroeder's Reversal of Fortune, Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet, István Szabó's Meeting Venus, Maxie (Golden Globe nomination), Ron Howard's The Paper, Stephen Herek's 101 Dalmatians(Golden Globe Nomination), Kevin Lima's 102 Dalmatians, Wolfgang Petersen's Air Force One, Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune, Rose Troche's The Safety of Objects, Merchant Ivory's Le Divorce, Chris Terrio's Heights, Rodrigo García's Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her and Nine Lives, Evening, Low Down, 5 to 7, Anesthesia, The Great Gilly Hopkins, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Julian Fellow’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Crooked House, What Happened to Monday, The Girl With All the Gifts and most recently Four Good Days with co-star Mila Kunis, for frequent collaborator, writer/director Rodrigo Garcia.
From 2008 through 2012, Close headlined the critically-acclaimed original legal thriller, Damages. For her riveting portrayal of high-stakes litigator ‘Patty Hewes’ Close won two consecutive Emmys (2008 and 2009), two subsequent Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe Award (2008) and three SAG Award nominations, all as “Best Actress in a Drama Series”.
Close has a total of 14 Golden Globe nominations and wins among her film and television performances.
Close has a total of 14 Emmy nominations and wins. Her third Emmy win was “Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special” for Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story. As Executive Producer, she also received an “Outstanding Made For Television Movie”. Emmy nomination, and the prestigious Peabody Award.
Other television credits include The Shield (Emmy and Golden Globe nominations), The Lion in Winter (Golden Globe Award, SAG Award, Emmy nomination), The Elephant Man, Something About Amelia (Emmy and Golden Globe nominations), Stones for Ibarra, The Ballad of Lucy Whipple and In the Gloaming (Emmy nomination, CableACE Award). She executive produced and starred in Richard Pearce's musical remake of South Pacific for ABC TV. She also executive produced the Sarah, Plain and Tall trilogy for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, starring in all three opposite Christopher Walken. For the trilogy she received both “Lead Actress” and “Outstanding Drama” Emmy nominations as well as a Golden Globe nomination for Sarah, Plain and Tall and a “Lead Actress” Emmy nomination for Skylark.
Close made her theatre, and Broadway, debut in Harold Prince's revival of Love for Love. Her theater credits include The Crucifer of Blood, The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs (Obie Award), Barnum (Tony nomination) and Tony Awards for her performances in The Real Thing and Death and the Maiden, both directed by Mike Nichols, and Sunset Boulevard (also Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards). In London, she reteamed with the director of the original Sunset Boulevard stage production, Trevor Nunn, in his Royal National Theatre revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. She returned to Broadway for the 2014 revival production of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance.
In 2017, Close reprised the role that won her the 1995 Tony Award: Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Sunset Boulevard, in a newly-conceived and mounted production that premiered at the London Coliseum in the Spring of 2016 (prior to a Broadway run). For that performance she won a London Evening Standard Award and an Olivier nomination.
Close made her Public Theater debut to rave reviews in the fall of 2018 in the New York premiere of Jane Anderson’s Mother of the Maid, starring as the mother of Joan of Arc. Directed by Matthew Penn, the production ran as a limited engagement at the Public's Anspacher Theater from September 25 through December 23, 2018.
In 2010, Glenn Close co-founded Bring Change to Mind, a charity dedicated to confronting, head-on, the stigma associated with mental illness. The organization works to normalize mental health conversations and build the awareness, understanding and empathy necessary to inspire action, structural change, and the creation of new norms which will end stigma and discrimination. The idea for the organization came about following Close’s first-hand observation of battles with mental illness within her family.
Close actively supports Puppies Behind Bars and their program Dog Tags: Service Dogs for Those Who’ve Served Us. She is a trustee emeritus of The Sundance Institute, having served as a board member for 16 years.
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An Evening with Glenn Close
Glenn Close is a seven-time Academy Award-nominated actress whose work has graced the stage, screen, and television. In this one-of-a-kind speaking event, Ms. Close brings to the stage her life in film, with stories behind some of her greatest roles and reflections on how her continuous reinvention has made for a lasting, illustrious career. As a mental health advocate, Close also shares personal stories of her own and others’ struggles with mental illness and discusses ways we can all end the stigma.
