Glenn Close is the front-runner in the Best Actress Oscar race for playing a wife whose writing talent is overlooked in favor of her award-winning husband’s. After picking up a SAG award for her role in The Wife on Sunday, Close spoke in the press room about what the movie, its complicated marriage, and its feminism meant to her. “It’s about a certain marriage and a very complex relationship, and I think the more specific and powerful you can make that relationship, the more people would be moved by it. The more they would leave the theater and think, I’ve got things I want to conquer myself,†she said, adding that she had no idea that the movie would resonate so deeply when it premiered in Toronto.
“When you think about it, the #MeToo movement didn’t even exist. We’re able to talk about the women like my mom, as I mentioned at the Golden Globes, who feminism was not in their sensibility, and when I think about [the fact that] I’m wearing my grandmother’s wedding ring because I found out that my aunt, Helen Lynch, after she died, the one thing she wanted to be was an actress, and she would never have been able to do that. I feel like I’m fulfilling her dream. I just think this is a personal, sad story and that makes it resonate so deeply.†Celebrities, they’re just like us! We’re all just trying to make our moms and aunts proud.
Reporting by Scott Huver.