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Playing the Field
What Glenn Close is doing in ''The Shield'' -- Why the Oscar nominee chose to take a part in a violent, gritty cable cop drama by Dan Snierson

She's boiled a bunny. Plotted to make a coat of many canines. Manipulated the hearts of 18th-century French aristocrats. But today, in an unsavory L.A. neighborhood, Glenn Close isn't embodying another villain — she's trying to capture one. Clad in shades and a Kevlar flak jacket, she's staked out behind a black SUV, a gun in her holster and an even more dangerous weapon at her side: Michael Chiklis. The two are shooting an episode for the fourth season of The Shield (debuting on FX March 15 at 10 p.m.) in which Close, as new Farmington precinct captain Monica Rawling, and Chiklis, as bad-mother cop Vic Mackey, hunt for a murder suspect and a drug distribution center. • Between takes, Close boasts about how she trained for the raid. • ''I did 25 laps in the pool this morning,'' she says. ''I did some crunches. I did a couple push-ups, too.''


Chiklis looks impressed: ''You're up to 25 laps now?''


''I'm up to 50,'' she says. • ''Wow,'' marvels Chiklis. ''Check out Close!'' • It's still true: She will not be ignored. By signing on to a full season of FX's gritty-gutty police drama, the 57-year-old actress — star of classics like Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, and The Big Chill — is adding another bold role to her 30-year career. It's a move that will likely boost the critically acclaimed show's audience, which dropped from 3.3 million viewers in season 2 to 2.5 million last season, and it's bound to raise the question: Why go from 101 Dalmatians to 101 Citations? ''I kind of like being the scrappy underdog,'' she says. ''What's the big deal?''


The big deal, of course, is that film icons rarely report for episodic duty. (Can you picture Meryl Streep moving into the Cohen guesthouse on The O.C.? If only.) But securing a Great is exactly what Shield creator Shawn Ryan had in mind when he envisioned the tough-yet-amiable captain who takes command of the fractured precinct this season. He recalls compiling a list of dream actresses that also included Susan Sarandon and Frances McDormand. ''I started setting my heart on while thinking, 'Don't get too worked up because it probably won't happen.'''


Close was thinking the same thing. The five-time Oscar nominee and three-time Tony winner — who nabbed a Golden Globe this year for Showtime's remake of The Lion in Winter — initially told her agents to turn down the Shield offer, but her reps persuaded her to at least take a meeting. So Ryan, FX entertainment president John Landgraf, and CEO Peter Liguori jetted to New York City for a multimedia, multi-hour pitch. Close said yes by the end of the week. ''I'm a sucker for good writing and for people who are really passionate,'' she says. ''There was something very seductive about being wanted so badly, and the fact that they had come all that way and were willing to sit in my little apartment...'' What also won her over was the chance to play a female who could compete in a testosterone-teeming environment. ''I was offered Dune right after The World According to Garp,'' she says. ''I turned it down there was this scene where they were running away from the big worm or whatever it was and the woman fell down, and everyone had to come back to get her. I said, 'What a cliché. I don't want to be the woman who falls down. I want to be the woman who's running just as fast as everyone else.'''

The Shield cast was shocked to learn Close would be their running mate. ''I spent the first five minutes on the phone getting upset with Shawn Ryan because I thought he was messing with me,'' says Chiklis, 41, who uses terms like ''national treasure'' and ''hot s---'' to describe his new costar. ''I remember saying, 'Why would you do that?' and he's like, 'No, I mean it!' She's one of maybe three actresses in my fantasy world that I'd get. There was this great exhilaration: 'Wow. Glenn Close. Holy s---. This is gonna raise everything up a notch.'''


After devouring 41 Shield episodes and brain-picking one of the few high-ranking female police officers in New York City for authenticity purposes, the actress spent her first days on set trying to keep up with the run-and-gun pace. ''She was very weary,'' recalls Chiklis. ''I put a hand on her shoulder and asked if she was all right and she's like, 'Yeah, I gotta buckle up.''' Adds Close: ''I didn't know where I was for a while. It's literally like jumping off a cliff.'' Her character also treads on unfamiliar turf, warily trusting dirty cop Vic to help clean up the hood with some controversial policies. But be warned: Monica isn't the battle-ax you'd expect her to be. ''Because Glenn is so capable of being strong, the easiest thing we could've done is to turn her character into this really forceful, charismatic bitch, but we weren't interested in that,'' says Ryan.


''It was important that this is a character we like.'' Then again, don't call her gun-shy. ''I think I kick major ass, and it's already controversial in my mind,'' Close says of Monica. ''I kick a grandmother and her kids out of a house. It's pretty rough. But my feeling is she's looking at the big picture.''


Speaking of the big picture, Close isn't ready to retire from the multiplex just yet. She's viewing her Shield gig as a 13-episode treat, before resuming that whole celebrated film career thing. (''I haven't won an Oscar yet,'' she says. ''Put that in your article.'') In the meantime, her big-screen workload hasn't dwindled. Close unveiled three movies at Sundance: Heights, a Merchant Ivory production in which she plays a Broadway actress; The Chumscrubber, a dramedy in which she plays a bewildered suburbanite; and the vignette-driven Nine Lives, which features Close as a young girl's mother. ''I'm too old to do a lot of parts, so what's left to do?'' she says, pondering for a moment. ''Queens. Eccentric grandmothers. Women with hats.'' For now, woman with a badge seems like a killer choice.

(Posted:03/09/05)


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