USA - Before winning countless awards and being nominated for Best Actress for "Albert Nobbs," Glenn Close grew up in a cult, which she attributes to strengthening her acting skills.
Close, 64, talked about her upbringings in a "right-wing change-the-world movement," or what she calls a "cult," known as Moral Re-Armament in a recent interview with New York Magazine.
"It was a cult, where everyone was told to think alike, and that's devastating," Close said. Today, the group is called the "Initiatives of Change" and describes itself as "a diverse, global network committed to building trust across the world's divides."
Close joined when she was seven-years-old, which "sort of pulled apart" her "Waspy Connecticut family" as soon as they decided to join. She stayed active within the group, including world tours for its musical troupe "Up With People" until she went to college when she was 22-years-old and ditched the group.
"I decided that I would not trust even my instincts," Close said. "Because I didn't know what they were. Everything had been dictated."
According to Close, her time spent within the "cult" strengthened and honed her acting skills.
"It also gives you a huge sense of looking from the outside in, and I think that in many ways that has been very good as an actor, because you are somebody who is asked to go into a character," she said. "I always felt that I was held together with Scotch tape and paper clips, and as an actor that's good."
Nowadays, Close lives in the West Village of New York City with investor husband David Shaw where she brought the "Albert Nobbs" film project to life after fifteen years of work and starring in the stage version in 1982.
In "Albert Nobbs" which she co-wrote and produced, Close plays a woman from Dublin who poses as a man to work as a hotel waiter. The movie snagged her a nomination for Best Actress in the Golden Globes, which she did not win, in addition to an Oscar nod for Best Actress in the 2012 Academy Awards. Glenn Close is up against Meryl Streep in "The Iron Lady," who won the Golden Globe.