Glenn Close

On a cold and dreary November afternoon, the cozy lobby of the Chateau Marmont calls to mind Dublin's once historic Morrison's Hotel, where Albert Nobbs, the title character in the new gender-bending drama starring Glenn Close, works as a waiter. Clad in black, Close and her costar Janet McTeer sit side by side in armchairs, digging into identical tuna salads and pots of English Breakfast tea — both equally exhilarated, if exhausted. For Close, the film's Friday opening, a one-week theatrical run that precedes a wider January release, represents the culmination of a 30-year artistic odyssey, one that last week netted both actresses nominations for Golden Globe and SAG awards.

This year's lead actor and actress nominees all turned in stellar performances, but each also had one key moment in which their character crystallized and made Oscar voters sit up and take notice. ACTOR Demian Bichir ("A Better Life") Gardener Carlos Galindo is doing the best he can to make a life for himself and his son, but hardship surrounds him at every turn, from his son's interest in joining a gang to looming immigration officials. Key scene: "I used to joke with Demian, saying, 'We have the Oscar scene coming up on Day 38,'" says director-producer Chris Weitz.

Glenn Close insists she fits the part of a prairie woman in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production, "Sarah, Plain and Tall." "I'm trying to be tall," the 5-foot-4 actress said, raising her skirt just enough to expose her elevated boots. "I've added four inches to my height." As for plain, she said: "I'm a New Englander and I think of New Englanders as being plain-spoken and unadorned and that kind of thing. There are different interpretations."

To say that "Albert Nobbs," starring Glenn Close as a woman passing as a man in 19th century Ireland, is a portrait of conflicted soul doesn't begin to touch the murky depths of the difficult character that is the pale center of this painful-to-watch film. Though sexual orientation is a theme the film tackles in ways both substantial and slight, that's not really the question where Nobbs is concerned. A "boy" who turned up at a hotel looking for work at 14 and grew into the nearly invisible butler we meet 30 years later, Nobbs seems so socially awkward, so scarred by a rape, as to have no sexual inclinations at all. The period piece unfolds in a rather posh Dublin hotel with plenty of upstairs-downstairs antics, a dose of typhoid fever, a range of assignations and all the personalities that would suggest.

After being on the brink of extinction the past several years, Broadway is booming this season. One of the biggest hits is the London import "Death and the Maiden." Written by Ariel Dorfman and directed by Mike Nichols, "Death and the Maiden" boasts a powerhouse cast: Glenn Close, Gene Hackman and Richard Dreyfuss. Close, nominated for a Tony for the 1980 musical "Barnum," won the coveted award in 1984 for Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing."

It is the eve of Glenn Close's debut as Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard"--and the actress is not ready for her close-up. For a recent dressing-room interview at Century City's Shubert Theatre, Close showed up makeup-less, her cheeks a fresh-scrubbed shade of carnation pink, garbed in a long, unadorned tunic of basic black. The only touch of Desmond here is a startling set of blood-red nails. But when a photographer appears on the scene, she flies to her dressing table.

There is a sequence in "Skylark," the sequel to 1991's acclaimed "Sarah, Plain and Tall," which star Glenn Close believes is the emotional core of the drama. "It is one of the most favorite moments in anything I have ever done," said Close, who also serves as co-executive producer of the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation premiering Sunday on CBS.

Not too long ago, you could look back on the year in film and find plenty of powerhouse performances by big-name actresses in major-studio movies: Meryl Streep in "The Bridges of Madison County" or "Out of Africa" or "Sophie's Choice"; Jodie Foster in "Nell" or "The Silence of the Lambs" or "The Accused"; Jane Fonda in "The China Syndrome" or "Julia."

WHEN Glenn Close started production this spring on "Damages," the new FX legal thriller in which she plays a wily, high-priced litigator, the veteran performer felt an unfamiliar bout of anxiety. "I found it very, very difficult, because there was no end," Close said of diving into the television series. "In theater or movies, there's a beginning, a middle and an end. And you own your character; you do your research, within the universe of that.

Three years ago, Glenn Close was asked by Caedmon Tapes to read aloud the text of the children's book "Sarah, Plain and Tall" to record on cassette. The 58-page book, which in 1986 won author Patricia MacLachlan the prestigious Newbery Medal for outstanding children's literature, spins a tale of a lonely woman cocooned safely in Maine in the early 1900s. She answers an ad for a mail-order bride to care for two children on the wild plains of Kansas.

It took Glenn Close nearly 30 years to bring her beloved theatrical character Albert Nobbs to film, so when costume designer Pierre-Yves Gayraud ("Indochine," "The Bourne Identity") arrived for work, Nobbs was by then almost a palpable entity for the actress. Close, a five-time Oscar nominee who also co-wrote and co-produced the story, wanted the quiet butler character to come to life in an elegant and practical manner; not simple, given that Nobbs is, underneath, a woman trying to stave off poverty by working as a servant in 19th century Ireland.

On a cold and dreary November afternoon, the cozy lobby of the Chateau Marmont calls to mind Dublin's once historic Morrison's Hotel, where Albert Nobbs, the title character in the new gender-bending drama starring Glenn Close, works as a waiter. Clad in black, Close and her costar Janet McTeer sit side by side in armchairs, digging into identical tuna salads and pots of English Breakfast tea — both equally exhilarated, if exhausted. For Close, the film's Friday opening, a one-week theatrical run that precedes a wider January release, represents the culmination of a 30-year artistic odyssey, one that last week netted both actresses nominations for Golden Globe and SAG awards.

Several well-established series scored major nominations in television categories for the 18 t h annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, which will also feature a showdown among three of film's most honored actresses. "Boardwalk Empire," HBO's drama about the rise of a gangster in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, received nominations for performance by a male actor in a television series (Steve Buscemi) and performance by an ensemble in a drama series. Buscemi, last year's winner, is nominated with Kyle Chandler ("Friday Night Lights")

Glenn Close's introduction to short filmmaking involved a Sony Handycam and a spontaneous one-day shoot. "I can't believe my little film is now being shown at film festivals," she laughs on the phone from her home in Maine. Close's 18-minute film, "Pax," is one of the featured presentations at the 16th annual Palm Springs International ShortFest running through Monday. Out of 3,000 worldwide entries, 314 short films are being shown packaged into 52 "themed" programs. Close's film, which she co-directed and narrates, is part of a lineup of animal-themed shorts titled "Animal Attraction" running on Saturday afternoon.

Glenn Close should be a little bit scary. After all, she's made a career illuminating the dark side of humanity, whether boiling bunnies, fleecing Dalmatians or playing lovers who remove any association of endearment from the word. Her latest turn, for which she has already received an Emmy and may yet score another, seems no great stretch: starring as "Damages' " Patty Hewes, a formidable attorney who thinks attempted murder is nothing to come between friends.

Dr. William Close, a self-proclaimed country doctor who became the personal physician of Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko and played a key role in halting the 1976 outbreak of the lethal Ebola virus that terrified Zaire and surrounding countries, has died. He was 84. He died of a heart attack Jan. 15 at his home in Big Piney, Wyo., according to his daughter, actress Glenn Close.

The producers of "Sunset Boulevard," the mega-musical at the Shubert Theatre in Century City, abruptly announced Thursday that the show will close after Sunday's final appearance with Glenn Close in the lead role, leaving the theater dark and thousands of advance ticket-holders disappointed. Faye Dunaway was scheduled to begin preview performances July 5.

Glenn CLOSE is walking down a tattered sidewalk near the Coliseum in South Los Angeles on a January day heading for her trailer in a Ralphs grocery store parking lot. She is on a break filming her first episode of the FX network's gritty police drama "The Shield," in which she plays precinct captain Monica Rawling.

Glenn Close wasn't too pleased to find out at the end of the first season of "Damages" that Patty Hewes, the scheming attorney she plays on the FX thriller, was the one responsible for the attempted killing of her protege Ellen Parsons. "I was upset!" exclaimed Close, curled up on her dressing room couch at a Brooklyn sound stage. It was a drizzly winter afternoon, and the actress had just finished shooting a scene for the show's second season, which premieres Wednesday.

YOU'VE heard this plot line before: Ambitious young upstart goes to work for a powerful pro and quickly learns that the real world is one crooked place. But have you heard the one about the powerful pro who tries to bump off the young hopeful?