Fresh off her Oscar-nominated performance in The Wife, Glenn Close will portray another unforgettable woman on screen -- Norma Desmond.
Close played Desmond -- a faded silent-film actress desperate for a comeback -- in the Broadway musical production of Sunset Boulevard in the 1990s and its revival in 2017, winning a Tony award for the role in 1995. Now she'll bring the character to life in a musical film version of Sunset Boulevard that will begin production in the fall, possibly in London (the first production of Sunset Boulevard was a 1950 Billy Wilder film). Paramount will release the film.
Musical theater icon Andrew Lloyd Webber will produce the film; he also was behind the 1994 Broadway production. Tony Ashford, who won a Tony award in 2002 for his choreography work on Thoroughly Modern Millie, will direct the film.
Close told Playbill her life experiences have prepared her even more for Desmond this time around.
"I'm not saying I'm getting better, but I am saying that I do have more experience," Close told the theater magazine. "With more knowledge of myself and experiences I've had and heartbreaks I've had and enduring as I have--theoretically, an actor should only get better because our bodies and our minds and hearts are the material with which we build characters."
Close's Sunset Boulevard performance will likely be a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination. She's been nominated seven times previously but never won.
