Glenn Close Kids & Family: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

After her incredible performance in The Wife, Glenn Close has been nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture at the year’s most prestigious festivals. She has already taken home the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award for Best Actress, and now, she’s waiting to see if she will be given the SAG Award and Oscar.

With all that time in the spotlight, many of us may be wondering about her personal life. Is Glenn close married? Does she have any children? What else do we know?

Read on.

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1. She Has Been Married Three Times

Close has been married three times.

She was first married to Cabot Wade from 1969 to 1971. Then, she was married to businessman James Marlas from 1984 to 1987.

Her most recent husband is David Evans Shaw, who she was married to from 2006 to 2015. Shaw is an American managing partner at Black Point Group. He was previously the founding chairman and CEO of IDEXX Laboratories, Ikaria Pharma, Sapphire Energy, and Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, among others.

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2. She Has One Child

Close has a tight bond with her daughter, Annie, whom she had with John Starke. She and Starke dated for four years, but never maried.

In her interview with The Guardian, Close shares, “When my Annie was three, she looked at me, and said, ‘I want you. I want all of you.’ I knew what she meant. I, at the time, was a single working parent, sometimes even when I was home, working or producing something, I was there and not there.”

She continues by explaining how difficult motherhood, in general, can be. “I had it easy because I could afford to have help – think of the women who can’t afford it and have to put their child in some shaky childcare centre. No, I think it is incredibly hard for women. Any person, in any profession, feels that tug [of guilt].”

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3. Her First Marriage Ended Before She Attended College

Close was briefly married before she attended university. Speaking to The Guardian about her first marriage, she explained, “It is a complicated story for me. I was married before college, and kind of in an arranged marriage when you look back on it, and my marriage broke up when I went to college, as it should have. I was 22. But my liberal arts school had a wonderful theatre – that was my training, my acting school.”

Asked by the outlet if she would marry again, she says she isn’t sure. But, asked if marriage is important, she says, “I think it is a positive evolutionary component that we are better with a partner. I think to have a partner that you can go through life with, creating a history with, that you can find a comfort with, have children with – there is nothing better. This is an opinion I have come to very late in life, at an ironic moment, where I don’t have any of that. I don’t know if I will again. But I do think it’s a basic human need to be connected.”

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4. Her Father Played a Major Role in Preventing the Spread of the Ebola Virus in Zaire

Few may know that Close’s father, William Close, was a surgeon, and played a major role in preventing the spread of Ebola during a virus outbreak in 1976. He also served as Congolese leader Mobutu Sese Suko’s personal physician.

When her father went to the Congo as a surgeon, Close lived with her brother and sisters and at a cult’s headquarters in Caux. “He went to the Congo, the former Belgian Congo, when he was 36 and stayed for 16 years.”

As the Hollywood Reporter points out, “During [Dr. Close’s] years in Congo, he grew in stature and influence and even adopted a Congolese son, Glenn’s brother Tambu Kisoki, who today lives in Sacramento, Calif.”

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5. Her Daughter Played Her Younger Self in ‘the Wife’

In The Wife, Close’s daughter, Annie Starke, plays the younger version of Glenn Close’s character Joan Castleman. (She did the same in the film Father Figures.)

In a recent interview with The National, Starke spoke about the experience, saying, “…of course it was daunting. I’m such a fan of [screenwriter] Jane Anderson’s scripts, and I’ve been a huge fan of Christian’s for years and years, so yeah it was daunting, but in a good way,” she says. “Because I was playing the younger version of my mother, I didn’t have to do any scenes with my mum, or Jonathan or Christian. But it was great to get so close to Harry Lloyd, who plays young Joe [Pryce’s character]. It was just the two of us on set for the first two weeks because we shot it in sequence, so I didn’t really have any scenes with anyone else, but it was still great to get to watch everybody at work.”

She went on to say that she worked very closely with her mother in developing the character of Joan. “The character was a real collaborative effort between mum and me – it would have been impossible to do otherwise if we hadn’t sat round the table discussing every little nuance, since we’re playing the same character… We actually used my grandparents, on both sides. They were both truly inspirational women with huge potential, it was just a case that a man’s career came first, so we looked to that a lot.”