What’s Behind Glenn Close’s Instagram Candor? ‘It Doesn’t Come Naturally’

Plus, Cameron Diaz emerges as lifestyle guru, Gary Oldman masters a new accent and Guy Pearce embraces fatherhood

Merle Ginsberg,

AARP

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Published July 11, 2024

Guy Pearce, Glenn Close and Cameron Diaz on a red, yellow and blue green background

(Left to right) Guy Pearce, Glenn Close and Cameron Diaz

AARP (Victor Boyko/Getty Images; The Hapa Blonde/Getty Images; Miikka Skaffari/Getty Images)

In-demand actors live many lives, both on-screen and at home. And that’s why they do it.

Cameron Diaz holding a smartphone next to Jamie Foxx in a scene from the Netflix film Back in Action

Cameron Diaz, left, and Jamie Foxx in "Back in Action."

John Wilson/Netflix

Diaz does double duty

Cameron Diaz, 51, is staging her acting comeback in the aptly titled Back in Action (with Jamie Foxx, 56, out in November) — and she’s wrapped Outcome with Keanu Reeves, 59 — but she’s definitely keeping her day job. After 10 years of a happy home life with husband Benji Madden, raising daughter, Raddix, 4, and new son Cardinal, 3 months, she’s still hands-on co-running her vegan wine label, Avaline. Only four years in, Aveline is the No. 2 organic wine in the U.S. and No. 1 at its price point ($14 to $20), pulling in $23 million a year. Some members of Diaz’s circle don’t expect her to make more films. “She’s been building up to lifestyle guru for years,” a producer and longtime friend tells AARP. “She lives and breathes what’s in her books (The Longevity Book and The Body Book) and is a world-class cook; she’s all about antiaging. Cami wants to break into the food world, maybe open an organic restaurant. That’s where her heart is. As she’s told many people, cooking is her love language.”

Gary Oldman in "Slow Horses."

Apple TV+

Gary Oldman’s vocal versatility

How does Gary Oldman, 66, go from Brit to Yank with such ease, juggling accents for movie and TV projects on both sides of the pond? The California-based chameleon spends time with specific voice coaches, some for his portrayals of real people, including Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz and Sid Vicious, and others for fictional characters like Count Dracula, for which he hired a singing coach to help him drop an octave. We’ll witness more of Oldman’s vocal dexterity this fall when he returns as slovenly London MI5 agent Jackson Lamb for the fourth installment of the hit show Slow Horses (Apple TV+, September 4), with help from a Cockney voice coach. Next: Paolo Sorrentino’s film Parthenope (September 19); in it, Oldman, the only English actor in an all-Italian cast, plays author John Cheever. “Gary’s so specific, he found a coach who could do Boston and Manhattan to emulate Cheever,” one studio insider he’s worked with tells AARP. “He’s obsessed with his characters; he collects trivia about them. I’m told he’s got a better collection of Winston Churchill memorabilia than most World War II junkies.”

Guy Pearce shirtless looking at documents in the film Memento

Guy Pearce in "Memento."

Newmarket Releasing/Courtesy Everett Collection

Guy Pearce’s favorite role: Dad

Guy Pearce, 56, has appeared in more than 60 films (L.A. Confidential, Memento) and made two solo albums, but he’s particularly relishing his role as dad to 7-year-old Monte, his son with partner Carice van Houten (Game of Thrones). “I’m in my recording studio behind our house [in Amsterdam],” he tells AARP over Zoom. “Monte is asleep. I don’t want to wake him. Carice is off on a project, so I haven’t worked since November. I’m really relishing being a dad!” He’ll still have plenty of output over the next few months. Pearce shot four films before daddy hiatus: The Shrouds, The Brutalist, Inside and The Convert. With a release date of July 12, The Convert is an epic film by New Zealand director Lee Tamahori, 74, about a British preacher (Pearce) who gets caught in the middle of a bloody war between Maori tribes in the 1830s. “It was a very emotional film for me,” says Pearce. “The story — and the fact that my late father was from New Zealand. His last remaining sister passed away the day I got to New Zealand to shoot. She was the closest to me and Mum after Dad passed [when Pearce was 8]. It made this performance particularly raw.”

Glenn Close's Instagram post from 2020 of her and her dog sitting in camping chairs while she hold a glass drink

Glenn Close's Instagram post from August 27, 2020.

Courtesy Glenn Close

Glenn Close’s Instagram close-up

If you follow Glenn Close, 77, on Instagram, you know the great dramatic actress doesn’t hold back: She makes funny faces, tells wacky stories, sips mezcal and messes up dinner. Most revealing, she has confessed that she got COVID and RSV at the same time, just when starting to shoot the third Knives Out movie in London. What’s with the candor? “I got into my Instagram during the COVID shutdown when it became a way to stay creative,” Close tells AARP from the set of the film. “Frankly, it doesn’t come naturally to me, but sometimes things strike me as funny and I think, What the heck, someone else might find it funny as well! In a strange way, my poor excuse of an Instagram is more an expression of me than anything else. However, I’m always fighting myself about whether to just experience something or to put it on Instagram. More often than not, Instagram loses. That said, I do feel part of a community and am grateful for their response to projects I’m working on, charities I support and family I love.”

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Hollywood reporter Merle Ginsberg has written about celebrities, film, TV, music and fashion for publications including The New York Times, Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Cosmopolitan and more.