At 71 years old, Glenn Close is truly living her best life ever – and that isn’t by chance or luck, she has spent years cultivating and consciously choosing to create a life that is personally and professionally satisfying and filled with joy.

And as Close accepted the Best Actress Golden Globe for her role in The Wife on January 6, she shared a heartfelt message with all women to “follow their bliss”, something that Close has been doing for her entire adult life.

A Life Well Lived

From a young age Close knew that she wanted to be an actress, saying, “When I was little, I felt destined to be an actress. I saw the early Disney films with Hayley Mills and said, ‘I can do that.’”

Close wasn’t wrong – she said that she could do that, and she DID. Over the course of her more than four decade acting career, Close has appeared in more than fifty films and more than a dozen television series. She has garnered countless awards and accolades including three Tony Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and has been nominated six times for an Academy Award.

Throughout Close’s career she has often stepped into the role of strong, independent, and even villainous female characters, saying, “I’ve played a lot of women that people have called bitchy or evil. They have been incredibly strong.”

But Close doesn’t just play strong women – she is a strong woman, which, apparently, she attributes in part to her ancestry, explaining, “I come from a line of tough, wonderful Yankee women.”

In her early twenties, Close put that inherent strength to use when she broke free from a “cult-like” group called Moral Re-Armament that her parents joined when they moved the entire family to Switzerland. Close was only 7 years old at the time and made the decision to leave the cult and enroll in Virginia’s College of William and Mary to pursue drama at the age of 22 years old.

Things only went up from there for Close as she never returned to her cult-member days, building an enviable acting career for herself. However, although Close never returned to the cult, she did put some of her experiences and observations to use in developing various character roles.

In one of her most recent roles in The Wife, Close has said that she based much of the character who put her husband’s needs and wants before her own, on her mother, saying, “In her 80s, she [Close’s mother] said to me, ‘I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything.’  My mom and my dad got married when they were 18 years old. My mom never went to college. She started having children very early. I can’t say that it was fulfilling for her, for all the potential that she had. She had a great artistic mind.”

Close not only was able to use her parent’s relationship as inspiration for her movie roles, but also as guidance for how she wants to live her own life, with a strong desire to never play second fiddle to a man. She has openly shared her thoughts on the male ego, saying, “I don’t think the male ego is necessarily conducive to having a really successful and recognizable partner.”

And while Close has been married four times, she is currently single, a relationship status that seems to agree with her as she explains, “I’ve never felt more alive or more eager for what’s coming next.”

With a possible seventh Oscar nomination for her role in The Wife and an upcoming role in both a Broadway theatrical and big-screen adaptation of the musical Sunset Boulevard, what’s coming next for Close seem to be many wonderfully exciting things – and we couldn’t be more thrilled for her!

Congratulations, Ms. Close, on your Golden Globe win and sending you lots of luck for an Oscar win!

Are you a fan of Glenn Close? Did you see The Wife? What experiences from your childhood have helped to shape your life as an adult? Share your thoughts and join the conversation below!