Glenn Close's Net Worth Won't Be Ignored
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She may not have Oscar gold, but she's still making bank in Hollywood.
Glenn Close has starred in movies that defined the '80s—and her net worth shows it. Fatal Attraction and The Big Chill depicted post-feminist womanhood in all its intricacies. As Karina Longworth points out on her podcast, You Must Remember This, Fatal Attraction hit a nerve with audiences because of the intense anxieties surrounding “career women” at the time. But Close imbued the character with vulnerability.
Close started her career on the stage, winning a Tony for Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. From there, she went on to become an acclaimed film actress — first gathering Oscar nominations in Best Supporting Actress, then Best Actress. In fact, she was nominated for an Oscar for her first-ever movie role, in The World According to Garp. However, Glenn Close has yet to win an Academy Award, and a whole cottage industry has sprung up lamenting this fact. But Close has done quite well for herself financially, even if the big industry prize remains out of her grasp. Read on to learn about Glenn Close’s net worth, her philanthropy, and her many Oscar snubs.
What is Glenn Close’s net worth?
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Glenn Close is worth $50 million in 2023. This includes her family's 1,000-acre ranch in Wyoming, her extensive television work, and her Oscar-losing movie work. Close doesn’t care about awards, though. “I’d rather keep the record going, you know?” she told Parade in 2021. “I guess if it continues too much longer, I’ll kind of say, ‘Well, f--k you!’” she laughs. “No, I don't do it to get an award. You have to find joy in what you do.”
Related: Glenn Close on Life in Montana, Her 3 Marriages and Playing Her Edgiest Role Yet
Is Glenn Close married?
Glenn Close has been married three times, with each marriage ending in divorce. Her first marriage ended when she went to college. “It is a complicated story for me,” Close told the Guardian. “I was married before college, and kind of in an arranged marriage when you look back on it, and my marriage broke up when I went to college, as it should have. I was 22. But my liberal arts school had a wonderful theatre—that was my training, my acting school.” This man she met while touring with Up With People, a band spun off from the “cult” in which Close grew up.
Glenn Close’s childhood in a “cult”
Glenn Close’s parents, Bettine and William Close, joined the Moral Re-Armament movement when she was 7. The Guardian characterizes the MRA as “a modern, nondenominational movement founded by an American evangelical fundamentalist which extolled ‘the four absolutes: honesty, purity, unselfishness and love,’” but Close’s explanation is much shorter: “cult-like.” Close moved from MRA compound to MRA compound in her childhood, first in Africa then in Switzerland.
“You basically weren’t allowed to do anything, or you were made to feel guilty about any unnatural desire,” she told the Hollywood Reporter of her time in the MRA. “If you talk to anybody who was in a group that basically dictates how you’re supposed to live and what you’re supposed to say and how you’re supposed to feel, from the time you’re 7 till the time you’re 22, it has a profound impact on you. It’s something you have to [consciously overcome] because all of your trigger points are.” Close broke off from the MRA when she went to school and discovered theater.
How many times has Glenn Close been nominated for an Oscar?
Glenn Close has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, and still has yet to win. “First of all, I don’t think I’m a loser,” she told the Associated Press after her eighth nomination for Hillbilly Elegy. “And I honestly feel that the press likes to have winners and losers. And then they say, ‘Who is the worst dressed?’ And, you know, ‘Who made the worst speech?’ Forget it. It’s not what it’s about. I say f--k them.” She is tied with Peter O’Toole for most nominations without a win. She’s still got some ways to go before reaching Susan Lucci status, however. Lucci was nominated for 19 Daytime Emmys and only won on her last nomination in 1999.
Close’s first nomination was in 1983 for The World According to Garp. She lost the Best Supporting Actress statuette to Jessica Lange. The next year, she again lost Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Big Chill, this time to Linda Hunt. For the third year in a row, Close lost Best Supporting Actress, when Peggy Ashcroft won for A Passage to India.
In 1988, Close moved up to losing Best Actress Oscars. She lost in 1988, 1989, 2012 and 2019. Many people thought it was really her year in 2019, when the plot of The Wife matched her star persona as an oft-overlooked powerhouse. But Olivia Colman nabbed a surprise win. The last time Close was nominated for an Oscar was in 2021 for her supporting role in Hillbilly Elegy. She lost that award to Youn Yuh-jung in Minari. But Close still feels like a winner to have been nominated. “Who in that category is a loser?” She asked the AP. “You’re there, you’re five people honored for the work that you’ve done by your peers. What’s better than that?”
How much does Glenn Close get paid for her film and TV work?
Glenn Close is substantially compensated for losing all those Oscars. Although her exact salary per film is not known, her extensive producer credits on IMDb belie a shrewd business mind. When an actor has a producer credit on their film, it often means they have more profit participation than someone who merely acts in the project.
One of Close’s most lucrative roles has to be that of Cruella DeVille in the live action 101 Dalmatians films. "I got in my contract that I got to keep all my costumes that I wore in the movie," Close told Pete Davidson in the Variety “Actors on Actors” series. "Then when they found out how expensive they were, they were unhappy that it was in my contract. They wanted to make another copy, another set, for me. I said no." Not only did Close get to keep her expensive costumes, she was given an executive producer credit on prequel film Cruella, despite the titular fashion maven being played by Emma Stone.
Close was also paid handsomely for her TV work. She made $200,000 per episode on Damages, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Damages ran for five seasons, and nabbed Close an Emmy for her starring role.
Does Glenn Close own any real estate?
According to New York magazine, Glenn Close bought a duplex in the West Village in 2000, “a rather modest postwar building on Charles Street.” Curbed says she bought it for $899,000, and sold it for $1.9 million” in 2005. From there, she moved into a place in The Beresford, a tony apartment building near Central Park. She and her third husband (then-fiancé) bought the spot for $6.025 million in 2005. The Observer reported that the couple sold it in 2010 for $10.5 million. Glenn Close also owns a ranch in Wyoming, which Tri-State Livestock News reports is 1,000 acres. In 2016, in honor of her mother, she put the family's Wyoming ranch into a conservation easement that protects it from development and provides valuable wildlife habitats.
In 2020, the LA Times reported that Close sold her Bedford Hills home for $2.75 million. Close had owned the home, situated on 10 acres in Westchester County, for over 30 years. She named the property “Beanfield.” She currently lives in Montana near her sister and other family.
Does Glenn Close have any philanthropic ventures?
Glenn Close has worked with many charities and non-governmental organizatons that focus on the environment, women’s issues and mental health. She wrote an op-ed for CNN in 2015 in favor of Barack Obama’s ivory ban, something that hit close to home given her childhood spent partly in Africa. In 2017, Close was named co-chair of the Panthera Council, who focuses on saving big cats in their natural habitats.
Close has been outspoken on women’s rights. “In the public mind, yes. I was outraged when I heard those defending Roy Moore declare that there was a war against men—I was like, are you joking?” Close said in 2017. “What do you think has been happening against women for centuries?” She participated in one of the first charity readings of The Vagina Monologues in 1998, which raises money to end violence against women.
Close’s sister was diagnosed with bipolar disorder late in life. The sisters have worked to end stigma against mental illness with their book, Resilience: Two Sisters and a Story of Mental Illness. Glenn Close also co-founded a foundation with the same goal. “Close co-founded Bring Change to Mind in 2010 after her sister, Jessie Close, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder,” the foundation’s website reads, “and her nephew, Calen Pick, with schizoaffective disorder.”
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