Glenn Close: Still having quite a run

These days actress Glenn Close is drawing kudos for a seemingly unlikely role. Anthony Mason has our Sunday Profile:

Take a stroll with actress Glenn Close around her New York neighborhood, and you'll be accompanied by the two terriers she calls her "boys" - "Jakey, 12, and Billy, 10.

"I always imagine what it's like to be a dog sniffing in New York!" she laughed.

She was taking Jake and Bill for a final walk before jetting off to the Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles, where the 64-year-old Close was nominated for Best Actress for her performance in the film "Albert Nobbs."

She did not win, but the betting is she may get another shot at a Best Actress award, as a potential Oscar nominee:

"It would be wonderful. I'm not going to lie, especially for this, you know?" she said.

Close had worked 15 years to bring "Albert Nobbs" to the screen. She not only stars in the film, she co-wrote and co-produced it.

She said she loved producing: "I consider myself a creative producer. I'm not a bean counter. I can't do a budget. But I love developing scripts, and I love putting the team together.

"People say, 'Weren't you really stressed by being, you know, three different things?' And I never really was."

The painfully shy Nobbs is a butler in a 19th century Dublin hotel . . . a servant with a secret, a woman who transformed herself into a man.

"It's interesting, 'cause a lot of people refer to Albert as a he," Close said. "But I never - to me she's always a woman."

"How would you describe Albert?" Mason asked.

"She stopped being feminine when she was 14. She disappeared into this disguise in order to survive."

Sexually abused as a child and abandoned by her family, Nobbs finds exile in her work:

"So not only for her survival did she disappear into this brilliant profession, in which you were supposed to be invisible anyway - servants were not supposed to look people in the eye," Close said.

She said she practiced a different kind of walk by studying Charlie Chaplin: "It's kind of picking up your feet a little bit more."

It was part of a remarkable transformation: "There came a time when I looked up and it wasn't me anymore," Close said. "And it was subtle. It wasn't gobs of prosthetics. It was actually only the tip of my nose, making my ears bigger, making them stick out a little bit more."

Close had first played Nobbs in 1982 in an off-Broadway play in New York. She won the part after she thought she'd flunked the audition:

"I was never good at auditioning," she laughed. "And it's tricky to go in and for five minutes play this woman who has been invisible as a man. And I stopped the audition and said, 'I'm boring myself so I must be boring you, so I'm going to go home."

Then, her agent called: "They told him it was the most interesting thing that had happened during the day. So they wanted me to come back."

A drama major at Virginia's College of William and Mary, the actress spent nearly a decade in the theater before landing her first film role at age 35, after director George Roy Hill spotted her in the Broadway musical "Barnum."

"I went on to give a very bad audition, trying to sound like Katharine Hepburn," Close laughed. But, she did get the part, of feminist nurse Jenny Fields in "The World According to Garp" (1982). The film, based on John Irving's novel, also won Close her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

"Well, I still remember when I heard that I had been nominated for 'Garp.' I was in the cellar of the house where we were shooting my second film, 'The Big Chill.' It was so far out of my realm of even thought," she said.

"And then you had quite a run," Mason said.

"I did for a while, didn't I?" she laughed. "All those years ago!"

She followed "Garp" with the role as the maternal Sarah in the college classmate reunion comedy "The Big Chill." Next, in "The Natural," she was the angelic Mary, who inspired Robert Redford to literally tear the cover off the ball. The two films won her two more Oscar nominations.

But Close was growing tired of playing strong, nurturing women, when she saw the script for a new project called "Fatal Attraction." She went after the part.

"Yes. I thought it was a fantastic part. The only thing I had a question about was the boiling of the bunny. I thought that was a little over the top. But I couldn't get it out of my mind. 'Cause I thought it was the kind of role that can be, you know, if you do it authentically, it's a fantastic part."

The part was Alex Forrest, a book editor who is dumped after a fling with the married Michael Douglas and becomes every philandering man's worst nightmare.

But as much as Close wanted the role, the producers did not want her: "They were so sure that I was wrong, that they didn't even want to meet me. They didn't want to have anything to do with me," she said.

Close convinced them to let her read for the part, determined to show her seductive side:

"The parts that I, you know - what was asked of me - were kind of good, nurturing, slightly iconic women," she said. "So you get the reputation, 'Oh, she can't be sexy.' And to me that never made sense. I wasn't asked to be sexual."

When it was released in 1987, "Fatal Attraction" become a phenomenon, and earned Close another Oscar nomination - her first for Best Actress. In all, she scored 5 nominations in the 1980s.

She said she usually doesn't watch her films: "Some I don't want to see!" she laughed.

But the 1996 film "101 Dalmations" was not one of them. Close, who grew up in Connecticut, had been entranced by Disney films as a child:

"I was just transported by them. I wanted to run away and knock on Walt Disney's door. So when I got to do Cruella it was kind of a dream come true - to play a classic witch!"

Close is now wrapping up a five-year run on the Direct TV series "Damages," in which she plays attorney Patty Hewes, who delights in eviscerating her adversaries.

The series allowed her to shoot in New York and be close to her husband and daughter. She was at home on the Brooklyn set when we visited her during the second season, scootering between sound stages, with her "boys," Jake and Bill, always in tow.

A close encounter with Glenn Close

During rehearsals, Close would sometimes hide the obediant Jake in discreet corners of the set.

The series earned Close some of her best reviews in years

"How do you feel about being thought of as Patty Hewes sometimes?" Mason asked.

"I love Patty," she replied. "I'm proud of her because I think it's a rare part on television for a woman in power. I really do."

Her performance as Patty Hewes also won her a Golden Globe and two Emmy Awards. But despite five nominations, Oscar has eluded her.

Glenn Close hopes "Albert Nobbs" will give her one more shot.

"You have three Emmys and three Tonys," said Mason. "Oscar would be nice."

"It would be nice!" she laughed. "Get another guy up there on the shelf!"