Glenn close to realising dream of shooting Dublin movie

HOLLYWOOD actress Glenn Close has revealed it was her dream to make her latest movie in Dublin.

Filming on Albert Nobbs begins on Monday, with Close taking the lead role, co-scripting with John Banville, and making her film producing-debut.

The star has a small budget of just €6 million.

“It is a real trick to bring off a movie, a period movie, on the budget that we have, but so far so good,” she said.

“At one point we were thinking of filming in Hungary, eastern Germany, Montreal in Canada.

“We’ve been all over the place but I’m really happy that we’re here because this is where it should be.”

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Brendan Gleeson and Maria Doyle Kennedy have been cast alongside international names, including veteran actresses Pauline Collins and Janet McTeer and young stars Mia Wasikowska and Aaron Johnson.

They will film for seven weeks in Dublin and Wicklow — but locations are under wraps to keep the story secret.

Close, 63, will play a woman who passes as a man to survive in Victorian Dublin in 1898.

She won an Obie Award for the character of Nobbs in an Off-Broadway theatrical interpretation of the short story, The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs, by Irish novelist George Moore.

Close paid tribute to the Irish Film Board for its support in ensuring the production came to Dublin. It gave €750,000 in funding to the project.

“It’s a really wonderful partnership and I’m very excited,” she said.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d have this extraordinary group of talent both before and behind the camera.”