Home&Away
Glenn Close
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 37)
around the world, offers its members
assistance with jobs, education, and
housing and also provides a supportive
community. “It’s a place where people
with mental illness can go and feel safe
and that they’re worth something and
have value,” Close says. Several times in
the past year, Close has volunteered at
the New York City Fountain House—
cooking meals, arranging flowers with
members, and working the phones to
help find places to stay for those who are
on the streets.
Her involvement in 2009 will be
riskier: in the year ahead Close, 61, will
headline a national advertising cam-
paign intended to diminish the stigma
of mental illness. The actress will rep-
resent the face of the three most
common mental health disorders:
depression, bipolar disorder, and schiz-
ophrenia. “When I first thought about
doing this, I wondered if people would
think that I was mentally ill,” says
Close. “Then I thought, ‘ What’s the al-
ternative? Not to do it?’”
“She gets nothing from this,” adds
Fountain House president Kenn Dudek,
“and it is in fact a little dangerous.
Everybody knows that if you come out
and admit a connection with these ill-
nesses, you risk being thought of as
unreliable or dangerous, when in fact
most of the mentally ill are not.”
As a child, Close was raised to view
challenge as a way of life. In 1960 her
father, William, who flew planes dur-
ing World War II and afterward be-
came a surgeon, moved to what is
now the Democratic Republic of Congo
with Glenn’s mother, Bettine, and
offered his services at the main hospi-
tal, eventually becoming the personal
physician to dictator Mobutu Sese
Seko. He also helped coordinate the
country’s response to the first Ebola
outbreak before returning to the United
States in 1976 to run a medical clinic
for low-income residents in rural
Wyoming. “I was brought up in a fam-
ily where doing for others was the nat-
ural thing to do,” says Close.
70 AARP JANUARY&FEBRUARY 2009
Over the years she has lent her name
to several philanthropic causes while
winning tributes for her stage and film
work. She married twice, had a daugh-
ter—Annie, now a junior at Hamilton
College—and found love again, last year
marrying David Shaw, a biotechnology
entrepreneur. The couple recently
launched FetchDog, an online retailer of
dog supplies, which donates a percent-
age of each sale to charity. Close brings
her own two rescued pups, Jacob
Charles (Jake) and William Hamilton
(Bill), and an occasional foster dog, al-
most everywhere she goes, including to
the set of the critically acclaimed Dam-
ages, where, she says, she is delighting in
“proving that a mature woman can be
sexy and complex and carry a show.”
“What’s so great about Glenn in this
role,” says Michael Nouri, who plays
her husband on Damages, “is that she is
willing to show the shadow side of
human nature, and it’s not a comfort-
able place to be. She’s got guts.”
“I’m interested in playing characters
who might be perceived as monsters,”
Close says. “I’m interested in where our
common humanity is, what makes that
person vulnerable.”
Her sensitivity to human frailty has
been heightened from watching her
mentally ill relatives struggle with ad-
diction, cope with treatment costs (“One
of my family members once had to
choose between buying a new coat for
her child or visiting her therapist”), and
deal with the side effects of their med-
ications. What has troubled Close the
most, though, and inspired her decision
to get more involved with Fountain
House, was witnessing the excruciating
isolation they experienced. “There was
a big part of me that wanted to get into
the trenches,” she says.
Close acknowledges that continued
research into better treatments for
mental illnesses is important. But erasing the stigma, she says, is the first step.
That will lead to better funding and
better care. Most important, it will
help ease the loneliness her family
members and others feel. For that, she
says, speaking out on behalf of those
who cannot always speak up for themselves is worth any risk. —Meg Grant
