Wit & Attitude Quote by Glenn Close

Close is doing something sly here: she’s laundering a loaded word - “difficult” - and handing it back to the people who use it. In Hollywood, “difficult” has long been a gendered stain, a career-threatening shorthand that often means “she wouldn’t play nice,” where “nice” translates to compliant, grateful, and quiet. Close flips the frame by insisting the supposed problem isn’t temperament or ego but standards. The hidden target isn’t the woman with the reputation; it’s the ecosystem that benefits from her lowered expectations.

The line works because it’s both defense and indictment. “Getting it right” sounds humble, almost craft-nerdy, but it carries a threat: if you can’t meet the work, you can’t hide behind vibes. Then she drops the real knife: “they just don’t suffer fools.” That phrase rebrands so-called abrasiveness as discernment, suggesting that what’s punished isn’t rudeness, but refusal - refusal to babysit incompetence, to soften feedback, to perform likability as part of the job.

Close’s context matters. She’s not an outsider throwing rocks; she’s a prestige fixture who’s watched how power circulates on sets and in press narratives. Her credibility lets her say the quiet part out loud: excellence from women is frequently recoded as attitude. The subtext is a warning to the industry and a permission slip to younger artists: if demanding competence gets you labeled, the label may be the point, a tool to discipline ambition.