Background

Ethnicity: Lange's father was of half German and half Dutch descent. Her mother was of Finnish descent.

Jessica Phyllis Lange was born on April 20, 1949, to Al and Dorothy Lange in Cloquet, Minnesota, the United States. She was the third of four children (having two older sisters, Ann and Jane, and a younger brother, George). As a child, she led a transient life because her father changed jobs often and moved the family constantly. Lange would note later that her family "lived like gypsies" and she herself would inherit this innate desire to travel far and wide into the world when she left Minnesota. Later in life, she would have a powerful connection to her home state but by the time she was out of high school, her only thoughts were to escape.

Jessica's grandparents were born in four different countries. Her paternal grandfather, George Oscar Alexander Lange, was German, and her paternal grandmother, Tena Trientje Eitens, was Dutch. Her maternal grandfather, George Ilmar Sahlman, was Finnish, and her maternal grandmother, Lillian Elvira Buskala, was born in Minnesota, to Finnish parents.

Education

Jessica Lange graduated from Cloquet High School. In the fall of 1967, she enrolled at the University of Minnesota and concentrated her studies in art. She wanted to be a painter but her restless nature and natural curiosity stifled her in the university environment.

In the spring of 1968, before she had finished her freshman year, Jessica met and fell in love with 24-year-old photography professor Paco Grande. Lange and Grande left school and traveled throughout the United States and Europe.

Grande and Lange embarked on a trek that would take them to New York, Paris, and New Mexico. They lived out of Grande's van and traveled extensively across Europe where Grande introduced Lange to many of his underground film community friends. They returned to Minnesota briefly in July of 1970 and were married at the home of Lange's parents.

The two eventually settled in Soho where Grande continued to work on experimental film projects while she pondered what she wanted to do. She had decided that she didn't have the commitment to paint and thought about dancing instead. One night, however, she attended a screening of the classic 1945 French film "Les Enfants du Paradis" ("The Children of Paradise") and it changed her life. It was Jean-Louis Berrault's performance as the mime who completely captivated Lange and she made the decision to study the art of mime.

She discovered that the great mime teacher Etienne Decroux taught in Paris. So, she left for Paris in March of 1971 with three hundred dollars in her pocket.

She spent two years there studying mime and the experience eventually perked interest in acting. Her lessons in mime would greatly influence her acting technique later on. She returned to New York to pursue acting lessons at HB Studio in 1973.

Career

Jessica Lange worked as a waitress at the Lion's Head Tavern in Greenwich Village and signed with the Wilhelmina Agency as a model. Although she did not like modeling and only got a few jobs, the Wilhelmina Agency would provide an unexpected connection to Hollywood.

In the fall of 1975, producer Dino DeLaurentis contacted the Wilhelmina Agency looking for fresh faces for the female lead in his big-budgeted remake of the 1930's classic King Kong. An agent at Wilhelmina, who knew that Lange was very serious about acting, recommended her.

She flew to Hollywood for the screen test but didn't expect anything to come from it. DeLaurentis himself was not impressed with Lange's looks and felt that she was not attractive enough for the part. However, upon seeing her screen test, his opinion changed. It was obvious that she had a talent and she got the part. She was asked to gain weight, have her hair lightened and braces on her teeth removed. King Kong The filming of King Kong was a lonely and frustrating experience with most of Lange's scenes played to a blank wall. Having never really acted before, she was uncertain as to how she was doing and she was not familiar with filmmaking techniques. She did her best, however, and relied heavily on the mime techniques that she had studied for two years in Paris.

King Kong was released in time for Christmas of 1976. The reviews were mixed and the public reception was poor although the film did make money at the box office. Lange received good notices from critics but most of the publicity she received was negative. Journalists seemed to dwell on the fact that she was a "former model" and played her up as the bimbo that she was portraying on screen. The publicity and the film had a negative impact on her career and her acting future looked grim. Six years later, however, Jessica Lange would have the last laugh.

Although she had signed a seven-year contract with DeLaurentis, Lange did not work for two years following King Kong. When there were no offers after King Kong, Lange returned to New York to continue her acting classes, studying with such legendary acting teachers like Sandra Seacat and Mira Rostova. In 1979, Bob Fosse, a close friend, wrote a part especially for her in his autobiographical film All That Jazz. She also landed a lead role in a lightweight comedy How To Beat The High Cost of Living.

She was acting in the play Angel on my Shoulder in North Carolina when she received a call from director Bob Rafelson. He was remaking the 1940s classic The Postman Always Rings Twice and was searching for an actress to play Cora, the waitress who schemes with her lover to murder her husband for insurance money. Jack Nicolson would play Frank Chambers, and he had remembered Jessica from a screen test that she did with him back in 1976 for a film called Goin South. That part went to Mary Steenbergen but Nicholson was impressed by Jessica’s screen test and he thought she would be great for Cora. Rafelson came to North Carolina and Lange read for the role and was hired soon afterward.

The Postman Always Rings Twice would not only put Jessica Lange back on the map as an actress but it would also establish her as an A-list actress. Postman did not do well at the box office, but critics everywhere marveled at Lange’s performance. As Cora, she was intense and seductive and showed a range of emotions that her former critics never dreamed she had. Her performance in the film gave her the credibility and the opportunity to practically choose any role that she wanted to do.

Lange had first read about 30s actress Frances Farmer when she was working as a waitress in New York and taking acting lessons. She knew that one day she would play Frances and had even approached Bob Rafelson about directing it but he was not interested. However, Graeme Clifford, an editor on The Postman Always Rings Twice, was.

The next year proved to be a momentous one for Lange. Her performance in the biopic Frances, in which she portrayed actress Frances Farmer, earned her a best actress Academy Award nomination. Filming Frances was intense and grueling and it took an emotional toll on her. She used every bit of rage that she had pent up over the past years and put it into her role. She said later that playing that part almost did her in. Kim Stanley, who played Frances’ mother advised her to do a comedy afterward. She took her advice when she was offered a part in Tootsie, a comedy to be directed by Sydney Pollack.

Frances and Tootsie were released simultaneously in late 1982. Although Frances received lukewarm reviews as a film, no one could deny that Jessica Lange had given a performance of a lifetime. In the meantime, Tootsie was one of the biggest hits of the year. When the Academy Award nominations were announced in February 1983, no one was surprised to hear that Lange was nominated for Best Actress. What was surprising, however, was that she had another nomination as well, that of Best Supporting Actress for her work in Tootsie. No actress had been nominated twice in one year since Teresa Wright did it in 1942. Lange would lose the Best Actress award to Meryl Streep but she did win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year.

Lange herself had a hand in producing her next film. Country was about the plight of Midwestern farm families and government foreclosures on their land. It was a subject that Jessica was concerned with and she had lobbied Congress on the issue. The film featured a sensitive performance that earned her another Academy Award nomination.

Her next film was Sweet Dreams, the life story of country/western singer Patsy Cline. Lange was a fan of Cline and she lip-synced her songs in the film. The role won her yet another Academy Award nomination. She continued to accept movie roles that appealed to her personally and never took a job for the financial aspects of it. Her films throughout the later part of the '80s were mostly low profile ones that did not fare too well at the box office but still brought her outstanding reviews. A fifth Academy Award nomination came in 1990 for her role as Ann Talbot, her first ethnic role, in Music Box.

Lange's film work during the '90s has been somewhat sporadic due to her taking time off to raise her children. She has often stated that the most important thing in her life is her children. She takes them with her wherever she must go to do a film or a play and has said that she does not do well without them. She said in an interview with a British newspaper "They're the only thing I think in my life that ever really anchored me, that I've ever felt cemented to. And I just enjoy them more than anyone else in the world. And I'd rather hang out with them than anyone else. I'd rather be with them than with anyone else. I find them infinitely fascinating."

Her acting career has extended to the stage. She first appeared on Broadway in 1992 as Blanche Du Bois in Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire. She repeated the role in 1996 to greater reviews on the London stage.

In November of 2000, she appeared in London again as Mary Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. She received the best stage reviews of her career and earned an Olivier Award (the British equivalent to the Tony) nomination. Like Blanche Du Bois, Mary Tyrone was a part that Lange longed to play. She told a Los Angeles Times writer, "Blanche and Mary had been in my mind for some time. I'd wanted to play Blanche since I was young, and Mary for at least 10 years now. If ever anyone asked me what roles I'd want to do on stage, I'd have said these two. So I didn't look for anything else. When the chance to play these roles came along, I put things in motion." She opened in yet another Tennessee William's revival, The Glass Menagerie in March 2005. It ran for 120 performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Lange has also found great success in television. She won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for the HBO production of Grey Gardens in 2009. In 2011, she joined the cast of American Horror Story, a successful series on the FX network which won her a Golden Globe award and another Emmy. She signed on for the season which featured an entirely different story and a different character, the nun Sister Jude. She was again nominated for an Emmy (but this time she would loose to Julianne Moore).

In 2012 Lange returned to the big screen as the mother of Rachel McAdams’s character in the romantic drama The Vow. She then played a woman whose son is murdered in In Secret (2013), an adaptation of Émile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin. The Gambler (2014) cast Lange in the role of the contemptuous, but ultimately sympathetic, mother of an English professor with a gambling problem. She later co-starred with Shirley MacLaine in Wild Oats (2016), a comedy about two women who travel to the Canary Islands after one of them mistakenly receives a life insurance check for $5 million.

Lange netted her latest Golden Globe for her supporting role on American Horror Story. Critics have hailed her scene-stealing turn as Constance, the oddball neighbor to the family living in a house haunted by a dark and brutal past. She won a 2012 Emmy for the role as well, followed by another win in 2014 for playing Fiona Goode. In 2015, Lange was nominated for yet another Emmy for her work on the show. The following year, Lange received the first Tony of her career in a return to the stage for her lead role in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.

In 2016 Lange earned widespread acclaim - and her first Tony Award - for reprising the role of Mary Tyrone in a Broadway staging of Long Day’s Journey into Night.

In 2017, Lange played screen legend, Joan Crawford, co-starring with Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis, in FX's series Feud. The television show, developed by Ryan Murphy, focused on the legendary bitter rivalry between the two Hollywood icons. Lange's efforts were roundly praised, earning her an Emmy win and a Golden Globe nomination.

In 2018, Lange was also honored with the Jason Robards Award for Excellence in Theater by the Roundabout Theater Company. Lange also reprised her role of Constance Langdon in American Horror Story: Apocalypse on episode 6 and 10. Lange has been cast opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the Netflix series The Politician. Lange is also lined up to star opposite Naomi Watts in Gia Coppola's second film, The Lonely Doll, adapted from Jean Nathan's memoir, The Search for Dare Wright: The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll, which chronicled the life of Dare Wright and her tempestuous relationship with her mother, Edith Stevenson Wright. In 2018, Lange dropped out of a role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and was replaced by Brenda Vaccaro.

In 2019, Lange received her tenth Emmy nomination - her first in the Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series category - for her work in American Horror Story: Apocalypse. Lange will portray Marlene Dietrich in the early 60s in a feature film for Netflix directed by Ryan Murphy.

In 2008, Lange published her own collection of black-and-white pictures entitled 50 Photographs (powerHouse Books) with a special introduction by Patti Smith. An exhibition of her work, along with a series of her films, was presented at the oldest international museum of photography and film, the George Eastman House, after which Lange was presented with the first George Eastman House Honors Award in 2009. In 2010, she published a second collection of photographs, In Mexico. Most recently, she released a children's picture book called It's About a Little Bird (2013), while for the first time in Russia, she exhibited in Moscow's Multimedia Art Museum in 2014.

Jessica Lange’s twenty-five-year career as an actress has been highlighted by her intelligent and powerful performances in over 20 films. She has excelled in playing Midwestern women who endure physical and emotional hardships (Country, O Pioneers!, A Thousand Acres) as well as women who find their lives thrown into extraordinary circumstances (Music Box, Men Don’t Leave, Losing Isaiah) She also seems to have a strong affinity for Southern women characters. Her most memorable roles have been Southern women like Meg MacGrath in Crimes of the Heart, Patsy Cline in Sweet Dreams, and of course Carly Marshall in Blue Sky. And then there are Tennessee Williams’s works in which she has played Maggie in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Achievements

• Jessica Lange is known for her versatility and intelligent performances. Over the course of her extensive career, she has won several prestigious awards. She is the thirteenth actress in history to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, having won two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, one Tony Award, one Screen Actors Guild Award, and five Golden Globe Awards. Additionally, she is the second actress in history to win the Academy Award for Best Actress after winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; the third actress and first performer since 1943 to receive two Oscar nominations within the same year; the fifth actress and ninth performer to win Oscars in both the lead and supporting acting categories; and is tied as the sixth most Oscar-nominated actress in history.
  
  She is the only performer ever to win Primetime Emmy Awards in both the supporting and lead acting categories for the same miniseries. Lange has also garnered one Critics Choice Award and three Dorian Awards, making her the most honored actress by the Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association.
  
  In 1998, Entertainment Weekly listed Lange among the 25 Greatest Actresses of the 1990s. In 2014, Lange was scheduled to receive a star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame, though she has yet to claim it.

Works

More photos

• book

  • In Mexico

    (Neither a tourist nor a native, Jessica Lange's black and...)

    2010
  • 50 Photographs

    (Jessica Lange’s career spans more than 30 years and 30 fi...)

    2008
  • It's About a Little Bird

    (Tucked away in an old barn, a wonderful secret waits to b...)

    2013

• movie

  • Don't Come Knocking

    (Writer/actor Sam Shepard (The Right Stuff, Black Hawk Dow...)

    2005
  • Masked And Anonymous

    (A traveling troubadour named Jack Fate (Bob Dylan) is spr...)

    2003
  • Prozac Nation

    (Award winners Christina Ricci and Jessica Lange star in t...)

    2001
  • Big Fish

    (To get to know the real man behind the myth, a son begins...)

    2003
  • Blue Sky

    (Uprooting his family after being assigned to a remote tes...)

    1994
  • Broken Flowers

    (When a mysterious pink letter informs Don Johnston (Murra...)

    2005
  • How To Beat The High Cost Of Living

    (A caper comedy about three suburban housewives who, in or...)

    1980
  • Rob Roy

    (Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange battle evil landowners amon...)

    1995
  • The Vow

    (Inspired by a true story, The Vow tells the tale of a hus...)

    2012
  • Cape Fear

    (Martin Scorsese brings heart-pounding suspense to this th...)

    1991
  • Frances

    (Jessica Lange stars in her Oscar-nominated performance of...)

    1982
  • Normal

    (Ray and Irma are a devoted couple living a normal life in...)

    2003
  • Neverwas

    (A stellar cast - Aaron Eckhart, Nick Nolte, Ian McKellen,...)

    2005
  • Far North

    (The story of a city woman who, upon learning her father's...)

    1988
  • Bonneville

    (Jessica Lange, Joan Allen, and Kathy Bates hit the road i...)

    2006
  • In Secret

    (A sexually-repressed young woman (Elizabeth Olsen) embark...)

    2013
  • Night and the City

    (A lawyer who can't win a case decides to become a boxing ...)

    1992
  • Cousin Bette

    (Based on Honore de Balzac's timeless novel, Cousin Bette ...)

    1998
  • Music Box

    (Music box provides celebrated director Costa-Gavras anoth...)

    1989
  • O Pioneers!

    (Alexandra Bergson is still a young woman when she inherit...)

    1992
  • Everybody's All-American

    (A moving slice of Americana that sizzles with sexy romanc...)

    1988
  • Crimes of the Heart

    (Three sisters with quite different personalities and live...)

    1986
  • Losing Isaiah

    (An African-American baby, abandoned by his crack-addicted...)

    1995
  • Men Don't Leave

    (Jessica Lange plays Beth in this warm-hearted, funny fabl...)

    1990
  • Hush

    (A new bride (Gwyneth Paltrow) moves to a beautiful countr...)

    1998
  • Tootsie

    (Dustin Hoffman shines as a struggling actor who becomes a...)

    1982
  • Grey Gardens

    (The lives of two eccentrics, mutually dependent women pla...)

    2009
  • King Kong

    (A petroleum exploration expedition comes to an isolated i...)

    1976
  • Sweet Dreams

    (Jessica Lange stars in this biopic of Patsy Cline, the gi...)

    1985
  • All That Jazz

    (A Broadway choreographer chain-smokes, pops pills and ove...)

    1979
  • A Thousand Acres

    (When an aging father retires, he passes the thriving fami...)

    1997
  • The Gambler

    (Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is a professor leading a doub...)

    2014
  • The Postman Always Rings Twice

    (Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange smolder and burn in a se...)

    1981
  • Wild Oats

    (Eva, a widow and retired history teacher, enjoys a quiet ...)

    2016
  • Country

    (Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard are Jewell and Gil Ivy. The...)

    1984

• music

  • Grey Gardens 2009
  • Life on Mars? 2014
  • Gods and Monsters 2014
  • September Song 2014

• TV series

  • American Horror Story: Asylum

    (Set in 1964, American Horror Story: Asylum takes us into ...)

    2012
  • American Horror Story: Freak Show

    (American Horror Story: Freak Show is the story of the per...)

    2014
  • American Horror Story: Coven

    (After 300 years of witches living in secrecy, new attacks...)

    2013
  • American Horror Story: Murder House

    (American Horror Story revolves around The Harmons, a fami...)

    2011
  • Feud: Bette and Joan

    (Ryan Murphy's FX anthology series FEUD: Bette and Joan ce...)

    2017
  • Horace & Pete

    (Horace & Pete run a small family bar in the heart of Broo...)

    2016
  • American Horror Story: Apocalypse

    (Underneath lies a battlefield for the final conflict betw...)

    2018

Religion

Lange periodically practices Buddhism. She once admitted, "It's been a discipline that makes sense more than anything because it's like a science. I've never been a religious person. I've always looked for some kind of spiritual meaning. I didn't grow up going to church. My mother's family were atheists and my father's side was confused."

Politics

Lange is a public critic of former United States President George W. Bush, once calling his administration "a self-serving regime of deceit, hypocrisy, and belligerence."

Views

Lange is a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), specializing in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in spreading awareness of the disease in Russia and has been a human rights supporter of the Buddhist monks in Nepal.

Jessica has been vocal about "ageism" in Hollywood, pointing out that it works with a male point of view. She is also a vegetarian. Lange also fostered a Romanian child with disabilities during the early 1990s.

Quotations: "Everything is transient. Everything is constantly changing. The only thing we have is now."

"Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness, those are life-altering lessons."

"Allow the diversity to exist. There is nothing wrong with it. Hell, we put up with the religious right-we can put up with transgendered human beings."

"Families survive, one way or another. You have a tie, a connection that exists long after death, through many lifetimes."

"There can be no better measure of our governance than the way we treat our children, and no greater failing on our part than to allow them to be subjected to violence, abuse or exploitation."

Personality

Everywhere Jessica travels, she tries to find a cemetery. She says they're the most mysterious beautiful places.

Lange has revealed that she suffers from severe bouts of depression, once admitting, "I have never been a believer in psychoanalysis or therapy or anything like that. I've never done that." She confessed, "Though my dark side is dormant right now, it continues to play a big role in whatever capacity I have to be creative. That's the well I'm able to tap into, where all the anguish, rage, and sadness are stored."

Physical Characteristics: Jessica Lange has a height of 5 ft 8 in or 173 cm and a weight of 63 kg or 139 lbs. Lange also has blonde hair and hazel eyes.

Lange got her first tattoo in Paris at age 19 - a crescent moon on her hip, the smallest one offered. She also has a Celtic knot on her wrist; her older daughter is similarly inked.

Interests

• photography, gardening

• Politicians

  Hillary Clinton

• Writers

  Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Émile Zola

• Artists

  J. Mendel, Marc Jacobs

• Sport & Clubs

  tennis

• Music & Bands

  Bob Dylan

Connections

Lange was married to photographer Francisco "Paco" Grande from 1970 to 1981. Though they separated not long after moving to Europe during the mid-1970s, they did not divorce until the early 1980s, after which Lange paid him an undisclosed sum in alimony. From 1976 to 1982, she was partnered with renowned Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, with whom she had her first child, Aleksandra Lange "Shura" Baryshnikov (born 1981). During that time, she was also sporadically linked with Bob Fosse, with whom she remained friends until his death.

In 1982, she met and entered into a relationship with playwright Sam Shepard. They had two children: daughter Hannah Jane Shepard (born 1986) and son Samuel Walker Shepard (born 1987). They lived together in Virginia, New Mexico, Minnesota, and eventually New York City, before separating in 2009.

Father:

Albert John Lange

Mother:

Dorothy Florence (Sahlman) Lange

colleague:

Emma Roberts

Acquaintance:

Jessica Chastain

colleague:

Evan Peters

ex-boyfriend:

Sam Shepard

Jessica started dating Pulitzer-winning playwright/actor Sam Shepard after they co-starred in "Frances" in 1982. A year later, he proposed with an antique sapphire ring, "I swept her outside into the cold wind and snow and popped the question." Shepard wrote to a friend: "We jumped up down together like little kids, giggling in the snow." The couple never did get hitched, but they had two kids together.

Lange had a fall at her home in Minnesota on March 17, 2009, breaking her collarbone and dislocating her arm. After an overnight stay in the hospital, she was released the next day. Soon afterwards (though unpublicized until December 2011), Lange broke up with her boyfriend of 27 years, Sam Shepard, leading to speculation that a domestic dispute had been the actual cause of her injuries.

Ex-husband:

Paco Grande

Paco and Jessica fell in love with each other in 1967 - Paco was 24 at the time while Jessica was 18. Three years after that in 1970, they exchanged their vows and became husband and wife - they seemed to live happily for many years, but eventually divorced in 1981.

ex-boyfriend:

Mikhail Baryshnikov

When Baryshnikov and Lange met, he spoke very little English; they communicated in French instead. His love affair with Jessica Lange turned to be short. They cohabited for 4 years and gave birth to a daughter Shura. At that time their relationship had been almost ruined. Lange was jealous of him, and he didn’t try to hide the fact, that she was not the only woman in his life.

Daughter:

Aleksandra Lange "Shura" Baryshnikov

Aleksandra Lange Baryshnikov was nicknamed “Shura” in her family - in this way her name is shortened in Russia, her father’s motherland. The baby girl resided with her unmarried parents in a rented house in California and went for Christmas to Minnesota, where her mother’s family house was located.

In her interview with New York Times Lange told, that family connections had always been very strong in her family. Her parents separated when the girl was in her early years, but she stayed connected with her dad and was inspired by his dancing style.

Daughter:

Hannah Jane Shepard

Hannah decided not to follow her parents’ footsteps and started her career as an administrative assistant in New York. The woman is actively involved in charity.

Son:

Samuel Walker Shepard

The only son of Jessica Lange was born in the summer of 1987. He was named after his father. Since the earliest years, Walker has been interested in music and pursued a career in this area, too. He was taught to play different instruments, including piano, fiddle, and banjo. In 2008 he became a member of the New-York based band "The Dust Busters."

Later it was renamed as "The Down Hill Strugglers." They make music of different genres, including old-fashioned ballads. One of the most noticeable band achievements is creating a soundtrack to the movie "Inside Llewyn Davis."

colleague:

Alec Baldwin

colleague:

Hugh Laurie

colleague:

Michelle Williams

colleague:

Jonathan Meyers

colleague:

Helena Bonham Carter

colleague:

Miley Cyrus

colleague:

Demi Moore

References

• Jessica Lange