She is one of the best actresses out there but, even with 8 Oscar nominations (this year, she again opts for the statuette for ‘Hillbilly: A Country Elegy’), Glenn Close assures that she has done really bad castings. In fact, as she has confessed to Variety, one of her worst experiences was during an audition for ‘American Gigolo’ in the late 1970s, a film directed by Paul Schrader and starring in Richard Gere.
The actress remembers the experience as one of the most shameful of her career: “I wanted to die at that moment.”
The interpreter, who at that time was doing a show on Broadway, took advantage of her days off and traveled to Los Angeles for the casting in which she had to face none other than John Travolta, who opted for the main character, who finally played Gere. “At that time, he was a star and I remember they spent the whole night preparing an office that was up to him for the tests.” The particular sequence took place on a bed. “When I arrived, there were about eight people and Travolta in bed. I wanted to commit suicide. He hadn’t memorized the text well and he didn’t know it either. It was so horrible, so humiliating… Now I realize what the game was: I should have tried to seduce him. It didn’t matter what he said. Obviously, I didn’t get the part. “
But this has not been the only ‘land swallow me’ that she has faced in her career. Glenn also remembers auditioning for the stage version of ‘Albert Nobbs’, a character that she would later play in the Rodrigo García-directed film and for which she would earn one of her Oscar nominations. “I was doing so badly that I stopped and said, ‘I’m getting bored to death. So I must be boring you too. I’m going home’. Shortly after, they called my agent and told him that it was the most interesting thing that had happened to them all day and that they wanted to see me again, ”she recalls. This time, the character was his.
