Actress Glenn Close is back on Broadway in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance. While promoting the show during an in-depth interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Close revealed that her father, Dr. William Taliaferro Close, left his comfortable life in New England to spend years in the Congo, battling Ebola. Dr. Close was Congolese leader Mobutu Sese Seko’s personal physician. While there, the doctor and his family were pulled into the right-wing, religious cult, Moral Re-Armament. While Dr. Close stayed in Congo, even combating the first major Ebola epidemic in 1976, Glenn and her siblings lived at the group’s headquarters in Caux, Switzerland.
Glenn Close said of the time with the cult in Caux: “You basically weren’t allowed to do anything, or you were made to feel guilty about any unnatural desire.” She broke free in her early twenties. It wasn’t easy. As Close said, “I had no toolbox to leave, but I did it.” Since then Close has developed an impressive acting toolbox (Fatal Attraction, The World According to Garp). In A Delicate Balance, Close plays Agnes, a married woman with a 36-year-old daughter (Martha Plimpton) who returns home as her fourth marriage crumbles. It’s up to Agnes to keep everyone in balance.
