Will Glenn Close Win An Oscar For The Wife?

This awards season, Glenn Closeis one of the favorites to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Wife. The film, directed by Bjorn Runge, is based on a novel, also called The Wife, by author Meg Wolitzer. Meg’s the brains behind The Uncoupling and The Female Persuasion, all critically acclaimed novels dealing with interpersonal relationships. The film, also starring Christian Slater, Jonathan Pryce, Max Irons and Annie Starke, premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival and has received widespread critical acclaim - but will it translate to an award?

Who does Glenn Close play in The Wife?

Glenn plays Joan Castleman, a woman who is so devoted to her difficult husband that she helps ghost-write his novel. The problem is, he receives huge accolades for her work, for which she is never credited. Not too dissimilar from the storyline of Colette, a film out now starring Keira Knightley, it’s been heralded as a feminist statement against the tyranny of men's exploitation of women's ideas. The argument goes, this woman has sacrificed all her authorship for her husband, because that’s what a good wife does. Even if it means both of them must lie, and Joan must sacrifice her ego, it's worth it to keep a man’s ego afloat. The film took 14 years to make, just like Albert Nobbs, with Close telling The Hollywood Reporter: ‘It was actually hard to find actors who wanted to be in a movie called The Wife. It's two women writers. And, you know, starring a woman. No one wanted to [make it] and, most of the money, if not all the money, came from Europe.’

The film’s feminism is poignant in many ways, as Close told The Hollywood Reporter ‘I thought a lot about this in the context of The Wife and my mom. Because my mom was very interesting, very smart … she never graduated from high school. She fell in love with my dad when she was 18. And she, at the end of her life, said to me, "I feel like I've accomplished nothing." I think about that a lot because we have our children and the nurturing/natural thing that we do as women, and then we have the need for personal fulfillment. We need to feed our souls, and our hearts. And that's what our work does.’

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Has Glenn Close been nominated for an Oscar before?

Yes, Glenn Close has been nominated for an Oscar - or Academy Award - a whopping six times in her life, and made iconic performances in her roles in Fatal Attraction (she played the infamous bunny boiler), and Dangerous Liaisons. However, she’s never actually won an Oscar, most recently losing out in 2011 for her turn in Albert Nobbs, as Meryl Streep’s performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady scooped the prize. Other performers - Peter O’Toole (8) and Richard Burton (7) - have been nominated more times without a win (O’Toole was eventually given an honorary award). And other performers - Thelma Ritter and Deborah Kerr - have been nominated just as many times without a win. However, Close is the living person with the most Oscar nominations without a win. If we were up in arms about Leonardo DiCaprio not getting his Oscar for ages (after five nominations), then we should also be bothered about Glenn Close not getting hers (as well as Amy Adams, who has been nominated five times without a win!)

Which Oscar category will she compete in?

The Wife might tackle a subject of women being downtrodden, but Glenn Close is firmly placed as the lead in this drama, opposite Jonathan Pryce, who plays Joan's husband, Joseph Castleman. Close has previously been nominated for other awards - Critics' Choice, Golden Globes, The BAFTAs as best actress for this role, so it’s pretty likely, unless something goes drastically wrong, that she will be nominated as best actress in the Oscars.

Who will she be up against in the Best Actress category?

Olivia Colman’s turn as Queen Anne in The Favorite will put her firmly into the category of Best Actress, and Lady Gaga’s debut as Ally inA Star Is Born is also set to nab her an Oscar’s nod. The other women tipped for the shortlist include 2017’s Best Supporting Actress Viola Davis, for her role in Steve McQueen’s heist thriller Widows, Melissa McCarthy for the archly funny forgery story Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Nicole Kidman in the revenge film Destroyer, newcomer Yalitza Aparicio for her role as a Mexican maid in Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, Kiki Layne for If Beale Street Could Talk and Rosamund Pike’s role as war journalist Marie Colvin in A Private War.

Shamefully, Amandla Stenberg, who played Star in The Hate U Give, has received very few nominations for her performance as a schoolgirl turned activist so far, so she is unlikely to make it into the Oscars race.

What are her chances of winning?

With a month to go before the Oscars ceremony, the frontrunners emerging are Lady Gaga, Olivia Colman and Glenn Close. It’s unlikely Gaga will win, though, because she’s such a newcomer, and a lot of buzz about her film has slowly faded. Colman’s already on a roll, too, having won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival and the Golden Globe for best actress in a comedy. But Close and Gaga tied at the Critics Choice Awards. There’s some speculation that Lady Gaga and Glenn Close might tie over the awards, due to The Favourite being a bit too off-beat and wacky for the Academy to award.

A tie has happened at the Oscars before, between Katharine Hepburn (A Lion In Winter) and Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl) in 1968. Hepburn, who famously said ‘My prize is my work’ had a habit of not turning up to the Oscars, which meant Streisand’s acceptance speech didn’t have to be shared, beyond the director, Anthony Harvey, making a little speech on Hepburn’s behalf, and helping Streisand as she tripped her way up to the stage. But there’s no chance Lady Gaga will stay away from the awards, so if it is a tie, it’s presumed the pair will accept it together. Besides, a surprise winner could still emerge late in the day...