The Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture went to Glenn Close for her work in The Wife, shocking a contingent that believed Lady Gaga would triumph for her star turn in A Star Is Born. Nicole Kidman (Destroyer), Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) and Rosamund Pike (A Private War) were the other nominees. Accepting the award, Close graciously said to the other nominees that they should “all be up here together” — but the veteran keeps the honor all to herself for posterity. The Wife? Sure you may not have heard too much about it yet, but Close is just glad you’ve heard about it at all — since, as she said in her acceptance speech, “it took 14 years to get made.”
[The Wife by Meg Wolitzer]
Close is a study in great acting as she portrays the wife of a Nobel Prize Winner reconsidering her life’s choices as she heads to Stockholm, Sweden — where her husband (portrayed with precision by Jonathan Pryce) will accept his prize. (Note: In Meg Wolitzer‘s 2004 novel, on which the film is based, the prize is the Helsinki Prize, not the Nobel.) Close has never won an Oscar despite six nominations, though this marks her third Golden Globe. RogerEbert.com called Close’s performance “subtly devastating, indicating a lifetime of repression and resentment in just the slightest wry smile or withering glance.”
