Canadian postcard by Canadian Postcard, no. A-126. Jessica Lange in The Postman Always Rings Twice (Bob Rafelson, 1981).
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Jessica Lange in Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982).
A memorable performance as an adulterous waitress
Jessica Phyllis Lange was born in 1949 in Cloquet, Minnesota, USA. Her parents were Dorothy (née Sahlman) and Al Lange (1913-1989), a teacher and travelling salesman. She has two older sisters named Ann Lange and Jane Lange, and a younger brother named George Lange, who is a pilot.
Jessica obtained a scholarship to study art at the University of Minnesota, where she met and began dating Spanish photographer Paco Grande. After the two married in 1970, Lange dropped out of college to pursue a more bohemian lifestyle, travelling through the United States and Mexico in a microbus with Grande. The pair then moved to Paris, where they drifted apart. While in Paris, Lange studied mime theatre under the supervision of Étienne Decroux and joined the Opéra-Comique as a dancer and became a model for the Wilhelmina modelling agency. She later studied acting with Mira Rostova and at HB Studio in New York City, while working as a model.
Producer Dino De Laurentiis cast her as the female lead in King Kong (John Guillermin, 1976) opposite Jeff Bridges. Although her of damsel-in-distress role earned her the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year and the film was the fifth-highest-grossing film of 1976, King Kong and Lange's performance attracted much unfavourable comments As a result, Lange was off the screen for three years.
She returned to the screen with a small but showy part in Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical film All That Jazz (1979). Lange had befriended Fosse, and they had carried on a casual romantic affair. He wrote the role of Angelique, the Angel of Death, especially for her. Then she gave a memorable performance as an adulterous waitress in the remake of the classic Film Noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (Bob Rafelson, 1981), opposite Jack Nicholson. The film received mixed reviews, but Lange was highly praised for her performance. The following year, she received rave reviews again for her exceptional portrayal of tragic actress Frances Farmer in Frances (Graeme Clifford, 1982). On set, she also met her new partner, actor Sam Shepard.
Lange became the first performer in 40 years to receive two Academy Award nominations in the same year, for Frances and for her part as a beautiful Soap Opera actress in Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982) starring Dustin Hoffman. She won the Oscar for Tootsie, which not only became the second-highest-grossing film of 1982 after Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but it also scored an additional nine Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. In 1984, she had a Best Actress Oscar Nomination for Country (Richard Pearce, 1984), which she also helped to produce. The film dealt with the perspective of family farm life struggles.
Spanish postcard by Colleccíon "Estrelllas cinematográficas" Cacitel, no. 31, 1990.
Romanian postcard in the STARURILE ŞI MODA series by Inter Contempress. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
A lawyer who defends her father and discovers his past
Jessica Lange was outstanding as country singer Patsy Cline in Sweet Dreams (Karel Reisz, 1985). She was nominated a fourth time for an Oscar. Lange's films in the mid- to late 1980s, which included Crimes of the Heart (Bruce Beresford, 1986), Far North (Sam Shepard, 1988), and Everybody's All-American (Taylor Hackford, 1989), were mostly low-profile and underperformed at the box office, though she was often singled out and praised for her work. She again received acclaim as a Hungarian lawyer who defends her father (Armin Mueller-Stahl) for Nazi crimes and then discovers his past in Music Box (Costa-Gravas, 1989). Her performance earned her a fifth Academy Award nomination.
She played another memorable role as a scared housewife in Martin Scorsese's psychological thriller Cape Fear (1991) opposite Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro. The film was a critical and commercial success and became the first Scorsese film to gross over $100 million. In 1992, she made her Broadway debut playing Blanche in Tennessee Williams's 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. Three years later, she also appeared in the TV adaptation, A Streetcar Named Desire (Glen Jordan, 1995), again opposite Alec Baldwin as Stanley.
For her role as a manic depressive wife of a military officer (Tommy Lee Jones) in Blue Sky (Tony Richardson, 1994), she won a Best Actress Academy Award, along with the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. Despite its critical praise and Lange's Oscar-winning performance, Blue Sky was not a box office success. In 1995, Lange gave critically lauded performances in the drama Losing Isaiah (Stephen Gyllenhaal, 1995), opposite Halle Berry, and opposite Liam Neeson in the historical epic Rob Roy (Michael Caton-Jones, 1995). Lange received strong reviews for her performance in Titus (Julie Taymor, 1999), an adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'Titus Andronicus', co-starring Anthony Hopkins and Alan Cumming.
In the new Millennium, she appeared mostly in supporting roles in the cinema, notably opposite Christina Ricci in the adaptation of Elizabeth Wurtzel's best-selling memoir on depression, Prozac Nation (Erik Skjoldbjærg, 2001) and as Albert Finney's wife in Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003). On TV, Lange starred opposite Tom Wilkinson in HBO's Normal, a film about a man who reveals to his wife his decision to have a sex change. For her role, she received nominations for the Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. In 2009, she won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for Grey Gardens (Michael Sucsy, 2009) with Drew Barrymore. She received the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress three years later, again in a Miniseries or Movie for American Horror Story (2011). In 2016, she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play for 'Long Day's Journey into Night'.
Jessica Lange was married to photographer Francisco Paco Grande (1970-1982) and had long-time relationships with Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov (1976-1982) and actor and author Sam Shepard (1982-2009). She has three children: Aleksandra 'Shura' Lange Baryshnikov (1981) with Mikhail Baryshnikov; Hannah Jane Shepard (1986) and Samuel Walker Shepard (1987) with Sam Shepard. In 2024, Jessica Lange returned to Broadway to play the lead role in Paula Vogel's play, 'Mother Play, for which she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play. She also starred in the HBO film The Great Lillian Hall (Michael Cristofer, 2024), co-starring Kathy Bates and Pierce Brosnan, and played Truman Capote's deceased mother Lillie Mae Faulk in the miniseries Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (Gus Van Sant, Ryan Murphy, a.o., 2024).
French poster postcard by Editions 'Humour à la Carte', Paris, no. A-C 125. Jessica Lange in Frances (Graeme Clifford, 1982).
Spanish collector card by Accion. Jessica Lange in Blue Sky (Tony Richardson, 1994).
Sources: Thanassis Agathos (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.
No comments:
Post a Comment