According to CBS News, Glenn Close will not present at the 95th Academy Awards after testing positive for COVID-19.
The veteran performer, 75, was set to join a long list of celebrities who will announce the winners at the ceremony on Sunday night. Riz Ahmed, Samuel L. Jackson, Dwayne Johnson, Michael B. Jordan, Troy Kotsur, Melissa McCarthy, Janelle Monáe, and others are among those set to present awards at the Oscars. Harrison Ford, who co-starred with Close in the 1997 action thriller “Air Force One,” which received Academy Award nominations for sound and film editing, will also be in attendance.
Close’s publicist, Catherine Olim, confirmed that the actor had contracted COVID-19 and would be unable to attend the Oscars ceremony on Sunday.
“She was very excited to be a part of the show,” Olim said in a statement. The publicist did not elaborate on the severity of Close’s symptoms. The Academy has not responded to the news of her illness, nor has it revealed who will take her place on stage on Sunday evening.
According to Deadline, Close was supposed to announce the winner of this year’s Oscar for best picture. “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Elvis,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “The Fabelmans,” “Tár,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Triangle of Sadness,” and “Women Talking” are the nominees for 2023.
Close, an eight-time Academy Award nominee has received critical acclaim throughout her decades-long career in film, television, and on Broadway. Close has received Oscar nominations for her roles in films such as “The Big Chill,” “Fatal Attraction,” and, most recently, “Hillbilly Elegy,” as well as numerous Emmys, Tonys, and Screen Actors Guild Awards.
TIME magazine named her one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2019.
