Real Talk With Glenn Close: She’s in Guardians of the Galaxy for the Money

There’s a lot to wonder about in the cast of Guardians of the Galaxy, and not just “who’s playing Rocket Raccoon.” Mostly how it manages to be so awesome and at the same time so tonally strange, with a Parks and Recreation alumn, action movie veteran Zoe Saldana, Lee Pace and Karen Gillan as antagonistic space aliens, and John C. Reilly and Glenn Close as officers in an intergalactic police force. But we can wonder no more about why Close signed off on appearing in the flick. We shouldn’t find it in any way surprising, but I’m still impressed and delighted at Glenn Close’s candidness.

Close recently appeared at the 18th Nantucket Film Festival, and was asked why or how she’d become involved in a huge budget special effects blockbuster like Guardians of the Galaxy. She answered candidly, saying that it wasn’t directly about her career goals, but rather an acknowledgement of what sorts of movies the industry currently focuses itself on.

I just did two independent films this summer and I had an absolute ball with fantastic actors, but in August, I’m gonna go off and do the next generation of Marvel Comics/Disney and I get to be the chief police of the galaxy… I’m doing that because it will then afford me to go do the other kind of movies that I really love, and hopefully I will have a great time [on Guardians of the Galaxy]. It’ll be a new experience for me, but practically speaking it will mean that I can do those smaller movies and it’ll be okay.

Money doesn’t grow on Groots, after all. Or does it? I don’t actually know that much about Groot. Close’s situation is not dissimilar to Robert Redford’s motivation in joining the cast of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. According to the veteran actor, he wanted to do something different, and play a villain.

Either way, I have no doubt that Close will bring her full talent to the set, and I hope she does have good fun playing the galaxy’s chief of police.

(via Comic Book Movie.)

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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