Who Are Glenn Close’s Parents?

Glenn Close was born on March 19, 1947, in Greenwich, Connecticut, to socialite Elizabeth Mary Hester “Bettine” (Moore) and William Taliaferro Close, a doctor who operated a clinic in the Belgian Congo and served as a personal physician to its dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

She has two sisters, Tina and Jessie, and two brothers, Alexander (nicknamed Sandy) and Tambu Misoki, whom Close’s parents adopted while living in the Congo.

Bettine Moore Close

Glenn’s mother passed on in 2015. She was an American socialite, and philanthropist

She was born Elizabeth Mary Hester Moore in New York City and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, daughter of Elizabeth (née Hyde; 1897-1983) and Charles Arthur Moore, Jr. (1880–1949).

Charles’s sister was Mary Elsie Moore, great-grandmother of actress Brooke Shields. Her aunt Mary had married into the Italian nobility.

William Taliaferro Close

Glenn’s father, William Close died from a heart attack in 2009. He was an American surgeon who played a major role in stemming a 1976 outbreak of the Ebola virus in Zaire, the first major outbreak of the viral hemorrhagic fever in Central Africa, and preventing its further spread.

He served President Mobutu Sese Seko as his personal physician, pilot, and director of security, and was Surgeon General of the nation’s army.