- Glenn Close became a household name for playing Alex Forrest in 1987’s ‘Fatal Attraction’
- The ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ star has been nominated for 8 Oscars without a win
- She’s been married three times and has one child
Glenn Close has had one of the most incredible Hollywood careers. She is a three-time winner at the Emmy, Golden Globe and Tony Awards and has earned three Grammy nominations. Her film work — including The World According to Garp, The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, Albert Nobbs, The Wife and Hillbilly Elegy — has also earned her a whopping 8 Academy Award nominations.
And while Glenn has yet to take home the elusive Oscar, and is one of most nominated actors without a win, that doesn’t bother her one bit. “I don’t think I’m a loser,” she said after losing the Best Actress Oscar to Minari star Youn Yuh-jung in 2021, per Vanity Fair. “Who in that category is a loser? You’re there, you’re five people honored for the work that you’ve done by your peers. What’s better than that?”
The Greenwich, Connecticut native, born in 1947, would go on to have as much success in her personal life as in her professional, finding love quite a few times and welcoming a beautiful baby girl along the way, whom she often gushes about on her Instagram. Although the three marriages may not have worked out, like her Oscar noms, Glenn doesn’t feel defeated in that category either. “Too many women define themselves in terms of a man,” Glenn once told People. “I think of men and women as two different species. Katharine Hepburn said they should live next door and visit each other once in a while. Not a bad idea.” Let’s meet Glenn’s three former husbands, and the father of her daughter, below.
Cabot Wade
Glenn was only 22 in 1969 when she first married. Her husband, Cabot Wade, was part of a musical troupe associated with a religious group called Moral Re-Armament. “I think that was basically an arranged marriage, actually,” she told Parade in 2021. That first marriage ended in an early divorce and Glenn went off to Virginia’s William & Mary, where she said she “really kind of started being myself, coming alive,”
James Marlas
Two year after her first Oscar nomination for 1982’s The World According to Garp, Glenn married businessman James Marlas. They divorced three years later and not much is publicly known about their relationship.
David Shaw
Glenn would go onto marry biotech engineer David Shaw in a small ceremony in Maine in 2006. After nine years of marriage, they decided to go their separate ways. “The divorce was mutual,” Glenn’s rep told E! News at the time in 2015. “She did not divorce him.”
John Stark
By the time Glenn scared audiences with her incredible portrayal in Fatal Attraction in 1987, she was in a relationship with movie producer John Starke, whom she had met on the set of The World According to Garp. The couple had a daughter, Annie, in 1988. They split in the early 1990s but remained co-parenting champs for Annie, who is also an actress. “I credit my parents for keeping me grounded and keeping it normal,” Annie told People in 2018. “I still have my oldest friends since high school. It was a wonderful place to grow up.”