Close, Glenn, 1947-, American actress, b. Greenwich, Conn. She began her career in the theater, debuting on Broadway in Love for Love (1974), winning an Obie for the off-Broadway The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs (1982) and a Tony for Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing (1984). She achieved immediate Hollywood success as the off-beat mother in The World According to Garp (1982) and went on to play a wise yuppie doctor in The Big Chill (1983), a bleachers muse in The Natural (1984), and various other largely wholesome parts. Close achieved international stardom in a chilling role, the obsessed and psychotic femme fatale of Fatal Attraction (1987). Her later characters have included the icy, depraved aristocrat of Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and the sharply witty newspaper executive of The Paper (1994). Close returned to Broadway in the drama Death and the Maiden (1992) and in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of Sunset Boulevard (1994), winning Tony Awards for both performances. She has also appeared in such films as as Jagged Edge (1985), Hamlet (1990), and Reversal of Fortune (1990), as well as in television dramas.

Close, Chuck (Charles Thomas Close), 1940-, American painter, b. Monroe, Wash., grad. Univ. of Washington (B.A., 1962), Yale Univ. (B.F.A., 1963; M.F.A., 1964). After studying in Vienna (1964-65), he moved (1968) to New York City. Since then Close has specialized in huge, coolly expressionless single portraits of his artist friends, himself, or his family, executed from his own photographs in painstaking detail on a grid of small squares. His first works were painted in black and white; he introduced color in the 1970s and 80s. In 1988, Close suffered a collapsed spinal artery, which left him almost completely paralyzed. A brace device on his partially mobile hand, a sophisticated wheelchair, and other aids allowed him to paint again, and in the 1990s his work became freer and more lively. Within the armature of his grids, each tilelike square is filled with swirling, warmly multicolored designs in various forms-X's, O's, concentric rings of ameboid shapes, and others-in closeup resembling tiny abstract paintings, but at a distance coalescing into monumentally frontal portrait heads. From the 1970s to the present, Close has also created a variety of multiple images in such media as mezzotint, aquatint, linoleum cut, woodcut, screen print, paper pulp, and daguerreotype.

(born July 5, 1940, Monroe, Wash., U.S.) U.S. artist. After early Abstract Expressionist experiments, in his first solo exhibition Close showed a series of enormous black-and-white portraits that he had painstakingly transformed from small photographs to colossal, Photorealist paintings. Throughout his career, he concentrated on portraits—from the neck up—based on photographs he had taken. In addition to self-portraits, the paintings were usually of friends, many of whom were prominent in the art world. He experimented with a variety of media and techniques, including using fingerprints and colourful tiles that, seen from a distance, combined into an illusionistic whole. In 1988 a spinal blood clot left Close almost completely paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. A brush-holding device strapped to his wrist and forearm, however, allowed him to continue working.

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(born July 5, 1940, Monroe, Wash., U.S.) U.S. artist. After early Abstract Expressionist experiments, in his first solo exhibition Close showed a series of enormous black-and-white portraits that he had painstakingly transformed from small photographs to colossal, Photorealist paintings. Throughout his career, he concentrated on portraits—from the neck up—based on photographs he had taken. In addition to self-portraits, the paintings were usually of friends, many of whom were prominent in the art world. He experimented with a variety of media and techniques, including using fingerprints and colourful tiles that, seen from a distance, combined into an illusionistic whole. In 1988 a spinal blood clot left Close almost completely paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. A brush-holding device strapped to his wrist and forearm, however, allowed him to continue working.

Learn more about Close, Chuck with a free trial on Britannica.com.