Oscar-nominated role was on Glenn Close’s mind for decades

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In the film “Albert Nobbs,” opening Friday, Glenn Close plays the title role of a Victorian-era woman masquerading as a man.

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Updated: January 26, 2012 2:18AM

A bunny boiler. A duplicitous 18th century marquise. A deluded silent-film star. The Dalmatian kidnapper-killer Cruella de Vil. Over the years, Glenn Close has portrayed some formidable and iconic characters, but only one has captivated her for three decades: Albert Nobbs, a Victorian-era woman masquerading as a male hotel servant to escape the strictures of her time.

In 1982, Close starred in an Off-Broadway production of “The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs,” adapted from a story by Irish novelist George Moore. Close, now 64, won an Obie for this performance and found she couldn’t let go of the part.

After several attempts to bring the character to the screen, Close finally succeeded. “Albert Nobbs,” which she also produced and co-wrote (even co-authoring its theme song), opens Friday in Chicago. She just received her sixth Oscar nomination for the film, which also garnered nods for supporting actress Janet McTeer and its makeup artists.

So tenacity pays off yet again. “For some reason, I wasn’t willing to throw in the towel,” Close said in a phone interview last week. “The original [1982] production was quite austere and minimalist, but the story blindsided me emotionally. And despite its seeming simplicity, it’s really a complex story with all kinds of issues that you don’t have to hit people over the head with. You just tell the story, and that’s kind of a rare bird. I’m just fascinated by the character, and she had real staying power for me.”

You might call it an invisible hold. Abused and raped as a child, Albert adopts her male persona as a means of protection. Fearful of being exposed, she literally tries to fade into the woodwork. In one of the film’s most symbolic motifs, Albert takes refuge on the hotel’s landing, seated in a chair, almost blending into the wallpaper.

“She has chosen a profession that, at that time, you were supposed to be invisible,” Close said. “You were not supposed to look people in the face. In some establishments, [servants] were told to turn their faces to the wall when guests passed them. In that way, she’s forced to be internal.”

Maybe too internal for some critics. As Slant magazine noted: “[Albert’s] paranoid reserve leads to near-total impenetrability. To call the performance understated is itself an un­derstatement.” But others picked up on the underlying motivation for Albert’s invisible-man guise. “Close inhabits Nobbs’ paranoid existence with the full weight of women’s oppression bearing down on her,” wrote Eric Kohn of indieWire. “She is the movie.”

Ever the Dickensian waif, Albert is yet an­­­other victim of the era’s suffocating patriarchy. “This is a time when women had no rights whatsoever,” Close said. “Here you have a woman who doesn’t even know who she is. She had no name, no family, no means of support. This is her way of staying off the street. Once people [realize] Albert is a woman, they know what it’s cost her.”

In any case, Albert stands in vivid contrast to Close’s past artistic lives. When Alex Forrest in “Fatal Attraction” (1987) declared “I’m not going to be ignored, Dan,” she almost set out a manifesto for Close’s subsequent and most memorable heroines: Marquise de Merteuil in “Dangerous Liaisons” (1988), Norma Desmond in the Broadway musical “Sunset Boulevard” and most recently, hard-charging litigator Patty Hewes on the TV series “Damages” (2007-2012).

Even so, to Close, these women are not that far removed from Albert. Alex, the Marquise, Norma and Patty are all isolated in some way, and maybe share a vestigial bond with a lonely butler.

“The film is about isolation, what people do to survive, whether it’s a secret they need to keep hidden, which they think will threaten their livelihood if it’s let out,” she said. “Lots of people walk around with secrets like that, and either feel shame or don’t feel free to talk openly about it.

“I also think there’s a growing sense of isolation today. It’s kind of counterintuitive, because we have all this instant communication. But we’re human creatures, and we thrive on two eyes looking into two eyes. That’s the connection we all long for. Basically what Albert hasn’t had and what she starts to dream about is a human connection. Everyone longs for that in their lives.”

As for longing, Close has racked up the awards — three Emmys, two Golden Globes and three Tonys — but the Oscar remains elusive. This year, she’s competing yet again against her awards season bete noire, Meryl Streep. In a statement released Tuesday, Close said: “I am thrilled for Janet, I am thrilled for our incomparable hair and makeup team. It might be my sixth but it feels like my first. Bravo, team Nobbs.”

If Close feels a pang of Oscar envy, she’d never tell. “I honestly have kept myself from buying into the winner/loser frame of mind, because I don’t see the positive side of that,” she said Tuesday to Entertainment Weekly.

Besides, getting “Albert Nobbs” to the screen must be her ultimate reward. And taking on multiple duties didn’t faze her. “I had a ball!” she said in a kind of Norma Desmond-like exhortation.

Because the film was so long in the works, “we were very prepared. I had a great collaboration with [director] Rodrigo [Garcia]. It sounds weird but I loved being a writer and a producer. To be in it this long, being in the trenches, raising the money, being in the production meetings — I loved it. I kept looking outside of myself and asking, ‘Are you OK with all this?’ But I was so thrilled that this project had taken on a life of its own.”

She let out another throaty Norma-like laugh. Speaking of the “Sunset Boulevard” grande dame, what about Lloyd Webber’s recent report that he’s ready to make the long-promised film version of the musical? Is she ready for her closeup?

She laughed again but with a tinge of skepticism. “Oh, that would fun. That would be great, I’d love her in anything. To be revisiting another character ...”

Albert Nobbs, meet Miss Desmond.