Top 10 Best Glenn Close Roles of the 80s and 90s

I love Tim Burton and think that 1996’s Mars Attacks is a real underappreciated gem of a movie. Glenn Close may not have a huge role here, but as the First Lady to Jack Nicholson’s President Dale, I think that she does a great job, especially during the early scene when the Martians first arrive and she is kind of freaking out about it all.

I love how Glenn Close can play a smaller role like this and be fantastic at it and then play a really dramatic and involved role right after. She truly is a leading lady that can do it all!

There was no way that I could leave Sarah Cooper off this top 10 Glenn Close roles of the 80s and 90s list! This is a fantastic movie and to be honest with you, Glenn Close is just one of the jewels of this ensemble cast. This is a comedy-drama movie and here we get to see the full range that Glenn Close has.

She is a happy go lucky woman who loves to dance while cleaning up, but we also see her breaking down and crying in the shower. These two scenes in this one movie do such an amazing job of showing how incredibly diverse and talented she is. This is actually a really good movie that will make you laugh and also break your heart.

Next up we have a voice acting role for Glenn Close. 1999’s Tarzan is one of Disney’s more underrated movies. You never hear it talked about and Disney hardly does anything with it. This is a wonderful retelling of the Tarzan story and in this version, Glenn Close voices Kala, a big gorilla who has an even bigger heart and is Tarzan’s adoptive mother.

There is a real warmth in her voice when she is talking to Tarzan and caring for him, due to that crazy and evil Sabor taking her own child. However, Kala is not some timid mother, she is stern when she needs to be, even with her husband, Kerchak, the alpha gorilla! Also, a shout-out to the fantastic Phil Collins soundtrack. Plus, a wee bit of trivia for you: skateboarding legend Tony Hawk provided the inspiration for the way that Tarzan moves while skating/sliding along the vines.  

While there is no doubt that 1997’s Air Force One is a Harrison Ford movie, Glenn Close also has a major role. While all hell is breaking loose up in the sky on Air Force One, Glenn Close’s Vice President Kathryn Bennett is trying to keep it all together and deal with it on the ground.

This is a powerful and awesome performance so it had to make my top 10 Glenn Close roles of the 80s and 90s list. In 1996 as we just discussed, Glenn Close would play the First Lady, just a year later and she had worked her way up to Vice President. It’s a shame that she could have not gone a step further and played the role of President in 1998!

If you want a hilarious and criminally underrated black comedy, Cookie’s Fortune is the movie for you. Released in 1999, this is a story about a family from a small town in Mississippi who are dealing with the suicide of their rather wealthy aunt.

Glenn Close plays the role of a “classy” southern belle called Camille Dixon and she is the one who actually discovers the body. In a movie that has a fantastic ensemble cast, Glenn Close manages to stand out by delivering an absolutely awesome and funny performance as this southern belle. This is one of those movies where things just get more and more out of hand as it goes on and it is hilarious.

We have Glenn Close going head to head with Michael Keaton in this fantastic 1994 Ron Howard movie. This is an interesting film in that it takes place all in a single day. Michael Keaton is a newspaper editor and he clashes with the managing editor, Alicia Clark, played by Glenn Close. The two have great chemistry here and while this movie has a great cast, Glenn Close really does stand out as a woman that you would probably not want to work with!

The World According To Garp is a very important movie in the career of Glenn Close as this would be her very first theatrical credit! While that is huge in itself, Glenn Close would get an Oscar nomination for this role, how crazy is that? With a great cast that puts her alongside Jon Lithgow and Robin Williams, this is a wonderful comedy-drama that sees Glenn Close play the role of Jenny Fields, a rather interesting mother to Robin Williams’s Garp. This is a fantastic movie and one that I personally feel not too many people remember or have even seen in recent years. If you fit that description, do yourself a favor and give this a watch. If you are a Glenn Close fan, you simply have to have seen this movie!

Based on a very popular French novel, Dangerous Liaisons sees Glenn Close play an old-timey French mean girl,  Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil. She is so conniving and mean in this role that you cannot help but love to hate her. With a truly amazing cast with John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeifer – not to mention a young Uma Thruman and Keanu Reeves – this is a timeless classic that still holds up to this day.

Hey, Emma Stone did a wonderful job, but when it comes to the live-action Cruella de Vil, Glenn Close is who I always think of. These days, Disney remaking all their classics in live action is normal, but in 1996, this was rather unique. Disney did such a wonderful job of bringing this classic story to life and a huge part of the reason it worked so well was that the casting of Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil is perfect! She was the face of the marketing and she was who everyone wanted to see. If you mention this movie to someone, Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil is what they are going to want to talk about. Sadly, the sequel is nowhere near as good, but we cannot hold Glenn Close responsible for that!

How could Alex Forrest not be at the top of this top 10 Glenn Close roles of the 80s and 90s list? An absolute classic movie and an iconic role for Glenn Close, this is the movie that gave us the term “bunny boiler” and a whole load of memorable lines, many of which are too risqué for me to write here. (But the classic, “I’m not gonna be ignored”, is one many people quote to this day.

Alex just becomes more and more unhinged as the movie goes on and you can tell that Glenn Close gave everything that she had to this performance. Without this, we would not have gotten all of the erotic thrillers that we did in the late 80s and 90s. Also, I want to mention that you have to track down the original ending to this movie, it is so much better than the theatrical one!