“I think I was too serious”: the 1994 performance Glenn Close will always regret
Every actor has their fair share of regrets. It’s rare that you’ll stumble upon a star who hasn’t expressed dissatisfaction with a movie in an interview at some point or another, whether they regret choosing to work with a certain director or aren’t happy with the way they played their role.
You’re never going to get it right each time, and Glenn Close can tell you that. She is one of Hollywood’s most celebrated stars, making her way to the big screen in the early 1980s following a career in the theatre the previous decade. The first ten years of her film career saw her opt for an array of popular hits, from The Big Chill to Dangerous Liaisons and Fatal Attraction, and her versatility quite quickly became apparent.
While these roles propelled Close into the mainstream, such that by the end of the ‘80s, she had five Oscar nominations to her name, she still found herself making mistakes. Perhaps she can’t help but be hyper-critical of her own performances, because when she looks back at a certain mid-‘90s role, she just sees flaws, even though the film was well-received by critics.
Close once revealed her disappointment when she watched back her performance in The Paper from 1994, which saw her play Alicia, a managing editor of the fictional The New York Sun. The movie follows another editor, Michael Keaton’s Henry Hackett, who becomes wrapped up in a case that he obsesses over, hoping to collect enough evidence to prove the innocence of two African American teenagers in connection with the murder of two white men.
The film was penned by Stephen Koepp, then an editor at Time Magazine, with his brother, David Koepp, who just so happened to have penned Jurassic Park not long before. The movie performed pretty well, and even Randy Newman earned an Oscar nomination for his musical contribution, ‘Make Up Your Mind’.
Despite its success, Close wasn’t happy with her performance, explaining, “I love Ron Howard, he’s a wonderful director, incredibly prepared. But I have to criticise my performance in that movie. It all took place in one day. My character was having a bad day, so she’s having a bad day throughout the whole movie. But this was a comedy, and I think I was too serious, too dense. Yes, I think that describes my failure there.”
Is Close being too hard on herself? She might not have won any awards for her role, nor does it remain one of her most memorable projects from the ‘90s, but her performance was by no means bad; of course, her criticisms are aimed more towards the angle she took, rather than the quality of her performance, but still, her hypercritical comments are futile in the face of a movie that’s already done and dusted.
The actor Antonio Banderas would do anything to work with again: “I will go to hell if it’s necessary”
The drunken night out that cost Tom Hiddleston his first shot at stardom: “You’ve got to learn one way or the other”
The “beautiful” 1980 movie Christopher Walken wants everyone to see: “Go and feast your eyes”
Still, her disappointment with her performance didn’t stop her from reteaming with Howard, though. Years later, she landed a role in Hillbilly Elegy alongside Amy Adams, the pair looking strikingly different as they stepped into the roles of JD Vance’s grandmother and mother, respectively. Yes, really; they appeared in a bizarre Howard-directed biopic of Republican monster JD Vance.
Despite the negative reviews from critics, Close did wind up earning an Oscar nomination for the part, so that’s something.
