Glenn Close Visits William & Mary For Homecoming 2024

As William & Mary celebrates Homecoming 2024, Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony award-winning actress Glenn Close visits campus to participate in a variety of events. The Flat Hat sat down with her to learn more about the legendary actor’s journey back to her alma mater.

From the unhinged Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction to the regal Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons, Close’s range and versatility have earned her acclaim across generations.

About Glenn Close

Glenn Close has played a multitude of characters throughout her decades-long career, but there is one character that sticks with her the most. Close reflected on the role of Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Carmel Snow during an exclusive interview with The Flat Hat at Homecoming weekend.

During her visit, Close participated in a plethora of campus festivities, including serving as the Grand Marshal for Homecoming parade, attending the Arts Quarter Dedication and participating in a Presidential Conversation with College President Katherine Rowe. Close also toured the McLeod Tyler Wellness Center and shared her own personal connection to mental health as well as her work in the field with Bring Change to Mind, an organization she founded to combat the stigma of the disorder.

The renowned actress, who has received six Academy Award nominations and a Golden Globe win, most recently appeared as a ruthless divorce attorney in FX’s Damages. Close’s five-season run as ruthless legal strategist Patty Hewes earned her critical acclaim and a slew of awards nominations, including two consecutive Emmy wins.

Glenn Close is currently ensconced in her Montana home, which she built herself, and spends her days writing, reading and spending time with her beloved Havanese dog, Pip. She is also the founder of Bring Change to Mind, an organization she founded in 2009 to combat the stigma surrounding mental illness, an area of advocacy that is especially personal for her given her family’s history of the disease.

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Biographical Information

As the College of William and Mary celebrated Homecoming Weekend this fall, acclaimed actress Glenn Close ’74 returned to her alma mater to participate in a variety of campus festivities, including a Presidential Conversation with Rowe. During her visit, Close visited the McLeod Tyler Wellness Center, where she toured the facility and discussed some of the large changes she has seen on campus since her time here.

A sassy, savvy dynamo on stage and screen, Glenn Close has earned Oscar, Tony, and Golden Globe nominations (as well as two wins) over the course of her career. She began her Broadway career in 1970 with a role in the musical Barnum, followed by several critically lauded performances, and made her film debut in The World According to Garp in 1982. She continued to receive a steady stream of acting assignments, and in 1987 she garnered the lead role of Alex Forrest in the thriller Fatal Attraction, a performance that led to her first Oscar nomination.

The decade that followed saw Glenn Close in a series of varied films, from her turn as Hamlet’s Ophelia to Reversal of Fortune and the journalism comedy The Paper. She continued to work in theater, with roles on Broadway in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance and the 2014 revival of Into the Woods, as well as in television, appearing on the series The Shield as Detective Patty Hewes for five seasons. Close has also been a frequent voice-actress on the animated TV show The Simpsons, and portrayed Dame Marjorie Main in 1996’s live-action remake of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians.

Filmography

Glenn Close was born and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, but left behind her family’s mansions and well-manicured lawns to travel the world and refine her acting skills. Her father, a surgeon, opened a clinic in Mobuto Sese Seko’s former dictatorship of the Belgian Congo — now the Democratic Republic of Congo — when she was 13, and Close spent several years between Africa and Swiss boarding schools before returning to Connecticut.

After beginning her professional stage career in 1974 with a role in Love for Love, Glenn Close became a full-time Broadway actress until the early 1980s, when she began to transition into film. Her breakthrough was her leading role in the 1982 movie The World According to Garp, which earned her an Oscar nomination. She received additional nominations for her roles in The Big Chill, The Natural, and Fatal Attraction, and she won a best supporting actress Oscar for her performance in Dangerous Liaisons.

Close’s biggest box-office hit of recent times was the 2015 film The Wife, for which she received an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA nomination. In a film industry where stars like Streep and Kidman rarely work on television, Close embraced the medium, appearing in 13 episodes of the FX police drama The Shield and winning a Golden Globe Award for her performance. She has also starred in such TV films as Death and the Maiden, Reversal of Fortune, and Sunset Boulevard, and has received three Primetime Emmy Awards for her performances in Margarethe Cammermeyer in 1995, Veronica Mars in 1997, and as Patty Hewes in Damages from 2007-2012.

Awards

Glenn Close has received a number of accolades throughout her career. She has won an Oscar, an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, among others. In addition to her film work, Close has also had a lengthy theater career. She made her Broadway debut in Harold Prince’s 1974 revival of Love for Love and went on to receive a Tony Award nomination for her performances in The Crucifer of Blood, Barnum, Death and the Maiden, and Sunset Boulevard (which she reprised at the Public Theater in 2017).

She also starred as Bonnie “Mamaw” Vance in the 2020 film adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy. While critics panned the movie, it was a box office hit, and Close earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance. Glenn Close has also been nominated for her roles in Dangerous Liaisons, Fatal Attraction, and Albert Nobbs.

Glenn Close is currently in production on several films, including Low Down starring Anton Yelchin and Chloe Moretz, 5 to 7, and the highly-anticipated Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. She has also joined the cast of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out Mystery thriller starring Daniel Craig. Close has also founded Bring Change to Mind, a mental health advocacy organization. The charity’s aim is to de-stigmatize the conversation around mental illness. Close’s nephew has schizophrenia, and her sister Jessie suffers from bipolar disorder.