Glenn Close has been one of Hollywood’s most enduringly commanding screen presences for decades, a reliable source of joy and laughter, drama and provocation. In Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Rian Johnson’s latest whodunit crime comedy, we are reminded of exactly what has made her such a treasure: As the staunch church lady at the heart of the film, she screams, shuffles, side-eyes, and sneers her way through a knotty and captivating character. As an audience, we enjoy her company up until her very last moment, even as we are shown a series of her most contemptible deeds. “To make waves, to not always behave well?” Close says plainly. “I think it’s fun.”
In many ways, Martha is the consummate Glenn Close role. Over her long career on both stage and screen, she has played just about every kind of person under the sun, but she’s made particular hay out of complicated, powerful, and even criminal characters in films like Fatal Attraction and Dangerous Liaisons, in which she portrays a manipulative marquise with a vengeful agenda. As the pious Martha — one of a circle of suspects in the killing of a local minister, played by Josh Brolin — Close showcases a unique ability to summon sympathy for what is basically a dark and destructive personality. “I realized a long time ago that you couldn’t do justice to a character if you were judging them, because that judgment will separate you from that character,” she says. “Your job as an actor is not to judge — it’s to understand.”
The film is Johnson’s latest in a trilogy of whodunnits, a collection of capers centering on a dastardly crime and the confusing web of blame that surrounds it. Each time, the sleuth, Benoit Blanc — played in a thick Southern drawl by Daniel Craig — is dispatched to uncover the mystery. In Wake Up Dead Man, when Brolin’s Monsignor Wicks is found dead, Blanc has to weave his way through an entire community of church parishioners, each of whom has a motive to murder. The cast is stacked with more heavyweights, like Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, and, in a stunning performance, Josh O’Connor, who plays a young priest with a questionable background. In Close’s Martha, Blanc finds his most formidable combatant, a woman whose hidden past is the key to unveiling the uncomfortable truth. “She has no life except the church,” Close says. “There’s a secret that has been with her for so long, it’s like a wound that’s badly covered over with scars. The only way to play it was to find as much truth in the tragedy of her life.”
Even after all these years — with over 100 film credits to her name and eight Academy Award nominations — Close still gets dazzled walking onto a set. “We were all so nervous because we were so impressed with everyone else on the set,” she says. “Working with this particular ensemble has been nothing but inspiring. When you see people doing wonderful work, it just makes you want to be better yourself.” In O’Connor, with whom she shares a decisive moment in the plot, she discovered an electrifying scene partner who brought out the best in her. “Well, he was just there — no artifice really,” she remembers. “I do think he’s our new [Hollywood Golden Age actor] Jimmy Stewart. He has such great heart. He’s an ‘every man,’ but he’s also an extremely gifted actor.” She was equally inspiring to O’Connor, who says, “She’s just so sharp. She has an adeptness that can only come from years of doing it and feeling safe to try some extreme things. And she’ll do it with, with seemingly very little self-consciousness.”
Their pivotal scene together is, in fact, the denouement of the movie. In both its predecessors, Knives Out and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Blanc concludes the plot by intricately walking us through the conclusion he’s come to — and how he got there. But in Wake Up Dead Man, Close is given the honor of doing the final wrap-up, after having been revealed as the culprit and falling defeated into the arms of O’Connor’s character. Close makes what could be played just for howls and chuckles into something that is downright thrilling and emotional, creating a climax that is hypnotic in its force. “When I read the ending — well, as an actor, you just hope you can pull it off,” she says. “[When we shot it,] I remember lying there, totally focused on Josh’s eyes, finding almost a lifeline in his eyes.”
Johnson credits Close with helping create an atmosphere of creativity and adventure on set. “Every single day, it’s as if she’s just got her first job,” says Johnson. “She has this giddy, boundless enthusiasm for the work of making movies, and it’s infectious.” For Close’s part, the magic trick, as ever, has been total commitment, approaching a role with full surrender, and inhabiting it so completely that the boundary between the actor herself and the character seems to vanish. “For me, it’s play,” she says. “I’ve always thought that being an actor is as close as we could get to total insanity — and then coming back.” Which is to say: what’s ultimately made Close’s career so enchanting these last 40-plus years: every time she appears onscreen, it feels like we have the privilege of meeting someone entirely new. “I think an actor’s job is to make believers of the audience. You have to be in the moment to such a degree that the audience believes,” she says simply. “Make them feel it.”
