Glenn Close has got a new theory about good acting. “When I’m in agony, I just have to act through it,” she tells Vogue on the eve of the BAFTAs 2019. “There were scenes in The Wife that I found so hard. The emotion hit me in the stomach, because the relationship was so complex.”
Her lifelong objective – “to choose films that represent a challenge and new emotional, psychological territory” – has paid off. After 45 years as a working actress, Close is hitting a home run of Best Actress accolades for her role as Joan Castleman – the long-suffering partner and ghost writer of Nobel-winning author Joe Castleman – in The Wife, Björn Runge’s quietly devastating adaptation of the 2003 Meg Wolitzer novel of the same name. But Close herself couldn’t be more surprised that her name has been called over her “category sisters” Lady Gaga, Melissa McCarthy, Olivia Colman and Yalitza Aparicio for a role in a film that took 14 years to make.
It was only when Close was seated on the balcony at the Toronto Film Festival premiere when she realised the extent of the film's emotional impact. “I was floored by how a little film and its nuances could catch people unaware,” she recalls. “It really touches a nerve, and uncovers something that is hidden but has not healed.”
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The last fight scene, in particular, is an emotional stalemate between a woman who has given everything to a man who never felt worthy of love, because fundamentally he thinks of himself as a failure. “Joe asks Joan, ‘do you love me?’ and I just didn’t know how to act it,” Close remembers. “I think that’s probably how the character felt – it was so unfair of him to ask her that.”
Over the phone, the 71-year-old actress is as gracious as one might expect given her string of considered awards speeches, and pinpoints the film’s success down to her collaborators. “Björn Runge is the essence of an actor’s director – he really knows the process and he respects it,” she comments on his ability to light and frame a scene. “It seems so basic, but a lot of times it doesn’t happen.” As for the “magnificent” Jonathan Pryce, who plays her partner? “Oh boy, we had fun.”
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Along with the screenplay writer Jane Anderson, Close and Pryce did a considerable amount of rewriting before the cameras started rolling. “I was in the o-zone for most of the time,” she recalls of the intense preparation period in Glasgow. “I had to understand her emotional arc, because it was a complicit relationship.” When Joan began “fixing” her husband’s writing, she simultaneously made him a hack and got what she wanted, which was to write and have people read her work. “It’s not all him, she bought into it until she couldn’t anymore.”
The worry that “every woman in the audience would get fed up with Joan for not leaving Joe” is a distant memory, but the film has struck a particular chord in the wake of the Time’s Up movement. “It’s phenomenal, because when we shot the film in 2016, #MeToo didn’t exist,” she muses. “People’s sensibilities towards it are more acute now.” Close touched on the subject in her “spontaneous” Golden Globes acceptance speech – “It was called The Wife. I think that's why it took 14 years to get made,” she said – and had people on the street thanking her for highlighting the sexism within the industry and day-to-day life. “The response was remarkable,” she says. “I feel pressure because I don’t think I’ll be able to repeat that again.”
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With the BAFTAs around the corner, and the Oscars in sight, you get the feeling that Close, a Hollywood doyenne who has built a career on choosing women who intrigue her, just might take home the Academy Award. But, even if she doesn’t, she has already won for the women she took on her journey when she told them to “follow [their] dreams” on stage at the Globes.
