A year ago, there were still people who thought Glenn Close was a man. She wasn`t a box office name, but she had to her credit an Emmy for
”Something About Amelia,” a Tony for ”The Real Thing” and a hat trick of Oscar nominations for best supporting actress in ”The World According to Garp,” ”The Big Chill” and ”The Natural.”
That was before last year`s release of ”Fatal Attraction,” a suspense film that has won her another Oscar nomination for the role of Alex Forrest, a sexy, single and mad-as-a-hatter woman who doesn`t take kindly to being rejected after a sex-saturated weekend with Michael Douglas, a married Manhattan lawyer.
According to Variety, ”Fatal Attraction” was the third highest-grossing film last year, coming in behind ”Beverly Hills Cop II” and ”Platoon.” It is still playing, and recently ranked No. 60 on Variety`s all-time money-maker list (between ”On Golden Pond” and ”Kramer vs. Kramer”).
Today, everyone knows that Glenn Close is not a man. Professionally, she has become ”bankable.” Personally, she has become pregnant.
”That`s life,” she says. ”The big hit movie of the year. Lots of offers. By the way, you are pregnant. Life just comes up and mugs you.”
The 40-year-old actress, at 5 feet 4 inches, is smaller than you might expect. Also quieter, apart from her throaty laugh. Gone are the boogywoman locks and carefully applied war paint of Alex as she sits on the couch of her modest two-bedroom penthouse in New York`s Greenwich Village.
Her surroundings are subdued, like her freckles and cropped reddish-blond hair. The walls are pastel and uncluttered. Dressed in black jeans and sweater with a white shirt, Close is curled up on her couch with her white poodle, Gaby, on her lap. She is the antithesis of her role in ”Fatal Attraction.”
There is nothing about Close that is threatening.
But she feels threatened since the incredible reaction to the film. ”It makes me value my privacy a lot,” she says. ”I certainly get very embarrassed when people recognize me because I know I don`t look like the image of what a movie star should look like. And the movie has been a phenomenon far beyond what you might expect.”
And because of it, so is she. American newspapers have reported her tangled love life and the child she is expecting on April 15-just four days after the Oscars, which she plans to attend as both a presenter and a nominee. ”I`ll waddle on,” she says, if the pregnancy allows.
She has never talked about her ”love child” before but says it is exactly that. ”It`s a love child,” she says, ”because it wasn`t something we were trying for, but sure, it had to be subliminally there. I suppose I`m happier than I`ve ever been in my life.
”But I was talking to my friend Bill Nicholson (a British writer) the other day and he said my life was rather overplotted at the moment.” She shrieks with laughter, adding, ”rather overplotted, and then some.”
A brief sketch of the plot begins while she was filming ”The World According to Garp” and had an affair with John Starke, the film`s production manager. Close says it lasted a couple of years and ”ended as these things do.” They got back together, but there were complications. Close, who was first married at 21 to a musician, had married again, this time to New York tycoon John Marlas, nicknamed ”The Golden Greek.” Starke was involved and living with a social worker.
”I was divorced last October, and I had been separated a year before that. But people forgot that stuff when `Fatal Attraction` came out. Because Michael Douglas played a married man, infidelity became a question, an issue. Now John and I are expecting a baby, we`re not married and the whole world was on the case.”
Still, she is delighted with her pregnancy, and has rented a house in Connecticut, where she will have the baby. ”And then I`m going back to work,” she says.
There is no shortage of offers, and many of them are types similar to Alex, a character Close credits with releasing her from a shell. ”I`m basically a very sexy person,” she says. ”It`s just that the roles have never been there before. Not in `Garp` or `The Natural` or `The Big Chill.` So I reveled in the role of Alex. I felt very sexy. I got into great shape-I had nothing to be ashamed of about my body. We took lots of care about the makeup and the last thing we did were those lips. And there she was.”
As written, Alex Forrest, with her scarlet nails and harsh, psychotic makeup, is Richard III in stiletto heels. Not even her mother could love her. But Close took care to portray Alex as more suffering human than malevolent monster as she obsessively stalks not just Douglas but his family as well.
”I never wanted to play Alex as a knife-wielding psycho,” Close explains. ”I worked very closely with psychiatrists while I was preparing for the part. I had to understand Alex. She was truly out of control. She wasn`t evil-just desperate. She`s frightening, but there are many people like Alex out there, and that`s what people find most frightening about this film. What`s astonishing is not the film and the character, but the reaction to it all.”
Describing her own life, Close says her childhood was ”difficult” since she was bounced around between boarding schools and grandparents while her father, a surgeon, went off to Africa to start a clinic. Today her sister and her nieces and nephews live in Montana and their pictures are the main adornment all around her living room.
”I think I prefer their sort of lifestyle to the stardom thing,” Close says. ”I really can get very difficult about doing all the stuff that goes along with the job. What you do at work is not who you are. I mean, people say they wonder whether Michael Douglas and I really do it in the film. That`s acting. That same thing happened with Jeremy Irons when we were doing `The Real Thing.` There were even stories written about our `affair.` Well, you want to do good work. You want to do something that will be worth people`s time. But it can get out of hand.”
However, the life of a movie star is not unattractive, Close admits.
”You know, the limousine existence when you`re making a movie is lovely. The movie world is great that way. The people really know how to take care of you. But it`s not real. And what it does is make me want to simplify my life- to come to work from basically a simple place. I don`t want it to be complicated. I don`t want to spend time on how I look and that sort of thing. ”My friends KNOW how I look. I had to wear fingernails in `Fatal Attraction,` and you realize what women who wear nails like that must do-they do nothing. I just wasn`t brought up to put my energies into that area. My friends certainly don`t care. I can`t afford to be worried about the image and all that —-. Anyway, the world knows I`m pregnant, so . . . people will form their own image, anyway.”
Close says she is ”terrified about the pregnancy because I know it`s going to change my life dramatically. I get very tired and I`ve had terrible morning sickness. In fact, I`m sick all day. I was sick while I was making
`Stones for Ibarra` for television (a film that aired last month).
”But actually, in other ways, it`s wonderful. John and I were together for two years after `Garp,` broke up, went our own ways and learned a lot and came out of that to find each other again. I think we both know that the worst thing we could do is jump into marriage just because that`s what`s expected of us. We`ll do what`s right for us when the time comes.”
Currently Close and Starke are ”developing” a script.
But for now her focus is on having her baby. ”I`ve had all the tests and everything is fine,” she says with a smile.
”Blue or pink bedroom? It`s yellow. A yellow room and a healthy baby and that`s all I`m saying. I need SOME secrets.”
