Glenn Close Breaks Down Why Her New Character in The Deliverance Was Beyond 'Freeing'

As an actor, your job is to embody your character when the cameras are rolling. And while some actors might take a more “method” approach, any good actor might learn from their characters as they embody them. After all, in many ways, they’re acting, speaking and potentially even thinking like them too.

For Glenn Close, her new movie The Deliverance did just that; it allowed her to think like her character, and, in turn, learn a thing or two about herself too.

“I think the thing that really cracked me open was stepping into her wardrobe,” Close told Entertainment Tonight. “The thing that I realized was that I’ve spent so much of my life not liking my body, just trying to hide it, trying to make it seem like something that it’s not.”

Her character Alberta, on the other hand, is fearlessly proud of her body. “And here is Alberta and a big key to her is she loves her body, she doesn’t care [what anybody else thinks] because whatever she puts on her body she is sexy and that was so freeing to me,” Close admitted.

For Close, getting to feel that self-love in her own skin was as liberating as can be. “Alberta was one of the great experiences I’ve had in my almost 50 years of acting,” she admitted. “I loved her.”

With that said, nailing her character was no easy feat. “I didn’t know who she was, I didn’t know how to get to her, and I said to [director Lee Daniels] ‘You’ve got to lead me in and he did.'” she said.

In the upcoming horror movie, streaming on Netflix on Aug. 30, Close plays Alberta, a religious white woman immersed in the Black community in Philadelphia, per IndieWire. While her daughter Ebony (Andra Day) works hard to take care of her and her kids, she finds some sort of demonic possession in her new house.

“This is a family that’s in a cycle of abuse and a cycle of addiction and when we first meet Alberta she’s in church because she’s trying to use the church to get out of her cycle but she can hope for her daughter that the same thing will happen but she can’t,” Close said of the story.

The Deliverance will be out on streaming on Aug. 30.

Before you go, click here and check out these TV shows about women over 50.