Glenn Close Interview

Glenn Close was an incredibly smart woman to interview; someone I immediately respected. A lot smaller than I expected. For someone who had been a bunny killer, I don't know - I just thought she'd be larger than life. (I think this is the common problem lots of people make with Hollywood stars - gasping in shock about how 'small' they are - when of course they're only somewhere between 5 and 6.5 feet tall rather than 3 metres tall as they appear on screen!

But Glenn - along with a handful of others - really was petite. Also reserved, mature, honest, guarded, almost scared.

She was a biggie for me to meet. She's just such a phenomenal actress, with or without her Oscars, and for me and my age group, she was almost an institution because of her character's notoriety from 'Fatal Attraction'.

The interview was with about 3 other journalists - the guy on my left was from a British magazine and already slanting towards the gossip-y angle. He came in with an agenda and didn't want to quit till he got the quotes he was looking for. Lots of journalists work like that. They already have the all-important 'angle' of the story pre-determined and have written most of the copy - and just want a few quotes to drop in to flesh out the story. I prefer conversations. I prefer discussions that have no map of where they're destined to end. I love that I don't know what I'm going to hear, and perhaps learn.

By the end of the interview I had made a real connection with Glenn and while the British journalist made her excrutiangly unhappy, I was the only one she looked up at when the interview ended to say (almost whisper) "thank you". I'm a big one for the thank you's. I always say thank you, and I appreciate when someone I've interviewed thanks me for the experience too. I am a total ANTI-autograph hunter, as a journalist. I have nothing against fans who ask an actor for an interview - absolutely understand that - and I had my own autograph book when I was a child - BUT I can't bear when journalists ask someone they've just interviewed for their autograph. It's just amateur, I feel, and demeans your own job. For me - while we're conducting the interview (and outside of the interview) - we're absolute equals - they're doing their fantastic job of interpreting other people's lives and characters for movies; and we're doing our job of writing about them and their film. [I also have an experience when I was in Std 7 about taping someone that maybe set me up for life...]

On the way to Glenn's interview, I read Premier magazine on the tube. It had excerpts from Glenn's diary, written during the filming of '101 Dalmations'. In it she mentioned that she had farted on set...something that in the pre-Britney Spears stepping out of a car with no knickers on era was not really spoken about - and it was about this point that I began the interview...