LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Glenn Close may be known for playing strong, often ruthless women, but like her long subdued character in “The Wife” she says she’s only just starting to feel comfortable in her own skin.

Close plays Joan, the self-effacing spouse of a successful novelist in “The Wife,” which opens in the United States on Friday as women in Hollywood and beyond are demanding a louder voice.

Decades of suppressing her own talents and desires in support of her husband’s career begin to unravel when he wins the Nobel Prize for literature and a biographer probes the couple’s life.

“The film took 14 years to get made and who knew that it would be incredibly relevant?” Close, 71, told Reuters. The film is based on the 2003 book of the same name by Meg Wolitzer.

Close’s performance has won rave reviews, sparking talk of a potential seventh Oscar nomination next year. The Hollywood Reporter said the actress “commands the center of ‘The Wife’: still, formidable and impossible to look away from.”

Despite a 40-year career, three Emmy awards, three Tonys and six Oscar nominations, the star of “Fatal Attraction” and the TV drama “Damages” says she feels she is just beginning.

“I’m a very late bloomer. It took me a very long time to learn some basic things. That’s why it’s kind of wonderful and ironic for me to be at this point at my life and feel like it’s just the beginning,” she said.

Close launched her acting career in the theater in the 1970s and said she feels lucky to have found success in job she is so passionate about.

“I think I’m at a time in my life where I’ve finally accepted certain things about myself, and it’s ok. The fact that I’m not a hugely social person, that I’m very much in my head is okay,” she said.

“I feel happier and more calm and more excited about life than I ever have.”