Glenn Close Opens Up About Depression and Self-Preservation

Based on the 2007 novel by Meg Wolitzer, the story focuses on Joan, the wife of renowned author Joe Castleman. The film follows the couple as they travel to Stockholm to accept Joe's Nobel Prize in literature. He pompously lavishes in the attention and lets a dutiful Joan fade into the background as he dismisses her writing skills, berates their son (an aspiring writer), and flirts and canoodles with other women.

More resentments bubble to the surface as secrets are uncovered and we learn the true price of Joe’s success. The Wife is a slow burning tale about sacrificing your ambitions for those you love, and whether one woman can live with the consequences of that choice.

BROADLY: Can you talk about how you approached Joan and where you drew your inspiration for the character?
GLENN CLOSE: I drew inspiration from my mom. My mom died when she was 91; she got married when she was 18. … My dad went into the war. Mom, you know, she had four children. My dad was highly educated and a very brilliant surgeon, and my mom was never mentored, never even graduated from high school, never took courses or anything, even though she had an incredibly inquisitive mind and was a voracious reader.

Attention was never paid to my mom. So at the end when she, she actually said to me at one point, "I feel like I haven't accomplished anything." Which for her, you know, it broke my heart because she was such an extraordinary woman. So I think the lesson for us was: Don't sublimate yourself to somebody. And I think in many ways, certainly in her generation, and the generation that Joan comes out of in this movie, I remember when women were either expected to get married, and become a teacher, nurse, or secretary. And other than that, when they were married, it was to be the homemaker, and that was very much taken for granted. So I had a lot to go on as far as somebody who fearlessly wanted to fulfill themselves in however they can.

Do you feel like there were any moments before this conversation with your mom, where it was difficult for you to see your own accomplishments?
Yeah, there was a time actually where I was very stressed out and I would wake up at 4 in the morning and think about every single decision that I made that I thought was a disaster. That I had really—I would wake up at 4 o'clock and only think of what seemed to be really bad decisions. And it was deadly. It really was deadly.

I got help—I went and found help, and I found out that I was depressed…so now I have that type of depression, it's like a low-grade depression. But finding that out what a revelation; I never would have characterized myself as someone who is depressed. But it was sometimes very hard for me to get traction in my everyday life. Work is easy, because at work you're structured; you have something right in front of you to focus on. But when I wasn't working, it was much more difficult.

How did coming to terms with this change things for you?
Well, one thing that I really am embracing—now I look back and life is very exciting for me now. It just is…I feel like I'm 18 years old. But a friend told me this thing [about a] concept that describes something that really meant a lot to me. Two things that I've learned is one: A lot of times, we think that we have to empty ourselves out in whatever we do—whether it's our work or with friends—and then you come to a point where you're against a wall and you have to go some place to somehow fill yourself up again. My friend said no, the situation should be that you deal with the world with the overflow, which means that you keep yourself filled up, and when you're ready—when you're filled up—then you can deal with the world when it doesn't mean that you will exhaust yourself emotionally or sometimes even physically.

And that really, really means a lot to me because I also now am taking more license to allow myself a time to do nothing, to read, to look very very carefully at going on a walk and looking at things that I'm passing, to take time out. And I really need that, and also to be able to say, if you're asked to do something, "You know what? That really wouldn't make me happy. I'm not comfortable with that, I don't think I'll do it." And that's OK! To learn how to turn down things.

Do you think that's the lesson that Joan learns by the end of the movie? I think it's left as a question mark, but that she had already opened the door.
Yeah at the end of the movie she's just opening the door to herself, and I think turning that page, you see this blank page and you see that she's not finished. But she's learned. I think she's coming to do it on her terms, and I think it'll be very different than it was before. Not without great heartache. I think she's going to make things right with whoever she needs to, especially her kids and then I would think eventually with the world. But the thing is, you feel that she now is really free to fulfill herself. And she'll be better all around because of it.

You’ve brought up this idea of being free and fulfilling yourself a lot. Do you feel like it's something you’re working towards every day?
I'm trying to. Something like that, you always will be working on it. And I think we want to please people. We want to be kind, and nice, and it's not like you don't have to be kind, but you do have to think of your own needs and how it will impact what you want to do later.

You talked about your mother as your inspiration. Are there other parts in the movie or in your life where you drew inspiration from her?
I can say for myself that I think—I don't know how much of it is instinctive or how much of it our culture put on us—[but] certainly in my generation [the] first instinct was to look into a man's eyes and say, "Who do you want me to be? I can be that! Whatever you want me to do, and I want you to feel good and I want you to like me because you feel good!"

That will put you right into a corner where all of a sudden you have to say, "Wait a second, this isn't me at all." And I've made the mistake of doing that in my life. It would be lovely—and I think your generation is better at it than mine—to say, "This is who i am, take it or leave it." Stick up for yourself. I think its really really important to know how to stick up for yourself, which I really never learned. I didn't have that in my tool box.

What do you see in your daughter that inspires you that way?
Well first of all, I'm really inspired by her relationship. She just got married. She and Mark have been together for I think almost 11 years and I really have watched them and really respect the way they are just who they are, but they're together. They are wonderful to be with. They're not sacrificing anything of who they are to come together as a couple. It actually augments them together, and I've watched that. I also have watched and questioned Annie's reliance, because it's a really, really tough profession. And the thing that you need in the beginning is just sheer resilience and I'm so proud of her that I've seen that. She inspires me; she's very funny, she makes me laugh. I love being in her company.

It's beautiful that Annie was able to play the younger version of you in this movie. What did it feel like to work together for this, did it feel heavier or imbued with the weight of your family legacy?
Annie felt it as well. Because she was aware of it in my mom, and in her other grandmother—who was a chemist. [She] worked on the Manhattan Project and gave that all up to move out to the middle of nowhere in Long Island and raise a family. Her paternal grandmother was always very politically savvy and active and very charitable in town and kept herself busy. But she basically, in that way, to have a natural ability not fulfilled, I think Annie felt that there were regrets there. And that kind of deep self-fulfillment…to feel at the end of your life that you have not had a chance to do that—no one should feel that way.