Academy Award nominee Glenn Close talks about “Albert Nobbs,” awards and LGBT equality

Glenn Close earned her sixth Academy Award nomination this week for her performance in Albert Nobbs as a woman masquerading as a man. Although she has won three Emmys and three Tonys, the acclaimed actress has yet to win an Oscar.

She talked to Frontiers IN LA about awards, about the film, and about LGBT equality. Here are some excerpts:

Do awards matter to you, both for this performance specifically and in general?
It sounds kind of disingenuous when I talk like this, but I honestly think that you’re almost a winner when you’re nominated, and the whole craziness around who wins and doesn’t win I just can’t buy into. For the winner, yes, it’s wonderful, and it would be wonderful to win everything, particularly because this is the most I have been invested and it was an incredible journey for me. But the journey itself had great closure and was challenging and satisfying in every way, so I don’t feel like awards would change that. Know what I mean? Of course it would be great, because I would love for a lot of people to see it. That’s where the nominations are very helpful.

While researching the time period in which Nobbs takes place, did you learn whether living as a male was typical for lesbians back then?
My research mainly turned up women who did this either to fight in wars, have a job or go on adventure. And then there are cases of people who married women, and the women found out later [their husbands] were women and not men. So I don’t know. It was a mixture, and whether they were lesbians or not, homosexuality was against the law. I’m not sure whether lesbianism was also against the law, but it was certainly considered aberrant and something to hide.

You famously played lesbian military vet Margarethe Cammermeyer in the 1995 TV movie Serving in Silence. When “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed, was it a big moment for you? And did you two talk about it?
Yes, it was. Definitely. I was in touch with Grethe when that all happened, and I would’ve loved to have gone to D.C. for that, but I just wasn’t able to. We talked about how proud we were that, back then, we did Serving in Silence, and to think of the time that’s gone by since and the lives [military policy and DADT] affected in an unfortunate way. But thank god DADT doesn’t exist anymore. Not that everything’s going to change, but at least it has on the books. I think, ultimately, [gender and sexuality] shouldn’t matter. I’ve said this about our film. In some ways, gender should be irrelevant. It shouldn’t matter who someone is connected to and finds love and a life with. I hope [full federal equality] will come to be a reality for the LGBT world.