In cinemas this week: The Wife is Close to being Glenn’s best-ever movie

FANS of Glenn Close’s large body of work will know how capable she is of making a great movie.

But her latest, at the age of 71, is being hailed as the best thing she’s ever done.

She stars in The Wife, centred around a woman questioning her life and the major decisions and choices she has made, as she travels to Stockholm with her husband.

He is the self-obsessed professor about to land a Nobel Prize for Literature, and she is wondering how she got to this point.

For the actress who came to many film fans’ attention with her horrid role as the other woman in Fatal Attraction, it’s quite a change.

And for Glenn herself, the critics reckon it is a new high in a very successful career.

The Wife was originally from the pen of US author Meg Wolitzer, and Glenn is Joan Castleman, wife of Professor Joe Castleman.

With scenes shot in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dumfries, there is plenty for Scottish film fans to get excited about, too, but it’s the performance of Close that has everyone applauding.

She had originally tried to get Gary Oldman for the role of her husband, which would have been intriguing, but Jonathan Pryce does a sterling job.

The Welshman, also 71, has been pretty prolific in recent years, with a trio of movies out last year, and he plays Don Quixote in another release this year.

He’s also been seen on a regular basis by a mass audience in Game Of Thrones as well as more great stage work, and it’s fair to assume he will be feeling as thrilled as Close about the early reactions to The Wife.

It was way back in 1982 that Glenn first caught the eye, in The World According To Garp, and the likes of Dangerous Liaisons, 101 Dalmatians and Hook have all been highlights in a busy career.

Nothing, however, has come close to the tour-de-force she’s said to deliver in The Wife, making it well worth a look.

“I never got into this business thinking I’d be like a movie star,” she says.

“Celebrity is death, celebrity is the worst thing that can happen to an actor.”

Perhaps that attitude explains why she is so good at playing real, ordinary people in real, quietly dramatic stories.

She has, however, finally found a balance between working too hard and finding parts she really wants to play.

“I’ve been sacrificing my life for my work for 30 years, and now I want it the other way around,” she says.

Glenn also has little time for the way cinema grows.

“It’s gotten out of control,” she points out, “it’s taking bigger and bigger names to make smaller and smaller films. I worry that important films without a big name attached won’t get made at all.”

Her most infamous scenes from Fatal Attraction, however, still manage to make her smile!

“Bunny boiler is now part of our language, and I’m proud of that!” she laughs.

For Jonathan’s part, he likes the fame for a short while, then the anonymity again.

“The rare awards ceremonies I go to are quite fun,” he admits. “I enjoy the irony of one minute walking to the tube, and the next being driven along the same stretch of road in a limo!”

The Wife is in UK cinemas from Friday, September 28.