Glenn Close cross-dresses for new role
There’s already Oscar buzz surrounding Glenn Close’s performance in the upcoming Albert Nobbs in which she plays a woman passing for a male waiter in 19th-century Dublin.
The film had its world premiere last weekend at the Telluride Film Festival and has been a personal role for Close, who also played the character in the stage play in 1982, as well as producing and co-writing the film adaptation.
The Tony and Emmy award-winning star told website The Daily Beast about her 29-year passion project, “I don’t think she knows [if she’s gay],” she said. “She has no knowledge of sexuality. She disappears for her own protection but she happens to disappear into a job where you’re expected to be invisible, so she’s an invisible person in an invisible job, and that makes her lose sight of herself.”
Close also revealed in the interview that she experienced a similar identity crisis as a child when her family was recruited into Moral Re-Armament, a Christian cult group.
“That could’ve been part of [my connection to Nobbs] because to protect yourself you had to… That’s very, very complex. Any kind of group-mandated thing, for a child, is quite dire. It’s cult living where you’re told what to say and how to act. It’s very sexually repressive and yet you’re supposed to be remaking the world, but you remake the world in someone else’s eyes, so you give up your individuality. As a child, it’s catastrophic because that’s where you’re trying to figure out who you are. I think I still have elements of that.”
Close’s legal thriller Damages, co-starring Australian Rose Byrne, finishes up its fourth season in the US this month. Foxtel’s W Channel is due to air it locally this year.
