Glenn Close

Glenn Close is an American actress whose five-decade career has produced multiple defining American film roles — particularly her eight Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominations (1983, 1984, 1985, 1988, 1989, 2012, 2018, 2021) — making her the most-nominated American living actress without a Best Actress Academy Award win. She was born Glenn Veronica Close on March 19, 1947, in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her father William Taliaferro Close was a Harvard-trained surgeon (who served as the personal physician to Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire, across 1960–1970), and her mother Bettine Moore was a homemaker. The Close family's 1960–1970 Zaire residence (when Glenn was 13–23) shaped her early-life biographical narrative.

Her education at the College of William & Mary (B.A. in Theater and Anthropology, 1974) launched her early-career path. Her 1974 first New York Off-Broadway debut and her subsequent 1980 Broadway debut in Stephen Sondheim's Barnum launched her early-career American Broadway public profile.

Her 1982 first feature-film appearance in George Roy Hill's The World According to Garp (in which she played the title character's mother Jenny Fields, opposite Robin Williams) earned her the 1983 Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination. Her subsequent late-1980s American film career produced multiple American films — particularly Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill (1983), The Natural (1984), and her 1987 lead role as Alex Forrest in Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction (the psychological-thriller opposite Michael Douglas).

Her 1988 lead role as the Marquise de Merteuil in Stephen Frears's Dangerous Liaisons earned her the 1989 Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Her subsequent film career has produced multiple defining American films — particularly Disney's 101 Dalmatians (1996, in which she played Cruella de Vil) and its 2000 sequel 102 Dalmatians, John Madden's Albert Nobbs (2011, earning her the 2012 Best Actress Academy Award nomination), Björn Runge's The Wife (2017, earning her the 2019 Best Actress Academy Award nomination), and Ron Howard's Hillbilly Elegy (2020, earning her the 2021 Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination). She has been married three times — to Cabot Wade (1969–1971), James Marlas (1984–1987), and David Evans Shaw (2006–2015).

Her name Glenn derives from the Old Scottish-Gaelic place-name meaning "valley." Glenn was a popular American unisex name through the mid-20th century.