At 78, Glenn Close is still out here stealing scenes in the new Knives Out movie, but when she sat down with Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the podcast Wiser Than Me, she got wonderfully candid about something most people avoid talking about: how she actually wants her last years to feel.
She’s not obsessed with what happens after she’s gone (no elaborate funeral instructions or anything), but she’s very clear about where and how she wants to spend whatever time she has left.
It all goes back to this perfect little stone cottage her parents had on their farm in Wyoming when she was a kid.
“It had originally been a slaughterhouse, of all things,” she laughed, “but they turned it into the coziest place you can imagine: stone walls, ivy crawling up the front, a tiny white picket fence right in the middle of a hay field, surrounded by woods. I swear that cottage holds my happiest childhood memories.”
So guess what she’s doing now?
She’s building an almost identical stone cottage behind her current house: two bedrooms, super simple. One room for her, one for a live-in caregiver who’ll be with her when the time comes.
“And that’s where I’m going to die,” she said, completely matter-of-fact but somehow still warm and peaceful about it. “Happily.”
What got me is how young she still feels. “Inside, I’m probably in my twenties—early thirties on a bad day,” she said, laughing. “When I remember I’m actually 78, it honestly shocks me. I just don’t feel like whatever people picture when they think ‘78-year-old woman.’”
Honestly? Same, Glenn. And if anyone’s earned the right to design their final act exactly the way they want it, surrounded by ivy-covered stone and good memories, it’s her.
What do you think, too much or just right? I’m kind of obsessed with how peaceful and deliberate it sounds.