Glenn Close picks up the phone in her Montana home and all hell breaks loose. Between waves of helpless laughter, she tries to explain exactly what is causing the chaos. “Sorry to be – can you hear me? – oh my God –there’s a dog going past the house and – wait there.” The pooch making all that racket is Pip, Close’s pet havanese. He only recently watched one of her films, she tells me; fittingly enough, it was the live-action version of 101 Dalmatians, in which she is a regally evil and blazingly camp Cruella de Vil in black-and-white fright wig and taloned gloves. “He was absolutely glued to the screen,” she says. Possibly in terror at her puppy-killing plans. Pip has his own Instagram account (he’s Sir Pippin of Beanfield). “Everyone knows about him, so I’ll have to start posting more things on there,” she says.
Now may not be the time. Over the next five weeks, the 71-year-old actor will have numerous awards ceremonies to attend – including the Baftas on 10 February and the Academy Awards a fortnight later – and in all likelihood more statuettes to collect in honour of her performance in The Wife as Joan Castleman, the overlooked spouse of a Nobel-winning novelist, played by Jonathan Pryce. Since its premiere nearly 18 months ago, the film has been seducing audiences and critics everywhere, with the Oscar buzz for Close building to a deafening volume. A few weeks ago, she won a Golden Globe; her pop-eyed, gobsmacked expression when her name was read out, followed by an eloquent speech in which she paid tribute to her late mother (“who really sublimated herself to my father her whole life”) and urged women “to find personal fulfilment”, has won her new legions of fans.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2T4ZJw1
