No one would accuse Close—who landed her first major movie role in Garp at 35—of giving up easy. For years she struggled to find success in Hollywood, and even today she's sometimes mistaken for Meryl Streep on the street. "We're both blonde and Waspy," she quips. The daughter of William, a physician, and his wife, Bettine, a homemaker, she grew up in wealthy Greenwich, Conn., with stints in Africa and Switzerland. "We didn't go to the theater," she says. "I was always in my imagination." She found an outlet in acting, playing the male lead in an all-girl version of Romeo and Juliet at her boarding school, Choate Rosemary Hall.
After college Close headed for Manhattan to work in theater, where her roots remain firmly planted. "I have to measure the cost of being away from the people I love," says Close, who only agreed to do Damages because it's filmed in the city, near her husband and daughter, who goes to Hamilton College upstate. "That's been the sacrifice of my life." Not that she has any regrets. "Getting old is hard, especially for women, but you've got to keep bucking yourself up," she says. "You have to keep telling yourself, This is the best I've ever been."
'As a child, I spent my summers in blue jeans on the bare back of a pony. We had this wonderful piece of land, and I played and pretended. Acting was a natural progression of that'
'This is me as Cleopatra,' says Close, who landed the role her senior year at the College of William and Mary
'I find it very hard to be away from the people I love,' says Close (with husband David Shaw and Annie, now 19)
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
