Biography

Jessica Lange

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Jessica Lange was born in 1949, in Cloquet, Minnesota, USA, where her father worked as a traveling salesman. She obtained a scholarship to study art at the University of Minnesota, but instead went to Paris to study drama. She moved to New York, working as a model, until producer Dino De Laurentiis cast her as the female lead in King Kong (1976). The film attracted much unfavorable comment and, as a result, Lange was off the screen for three years. She was given a small but showy part in Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979), before giving a memorable performance in Bob Rafelson's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), as an adulterous waitress. The following year, she won rave reviews for her exceptional portrayal of actress Frances Farmer in Frances (1982) and a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her work in Sydney Pollack's Tootsie (1982) (as a beautiful soap-opera actress). She was also outstanding as country singer Patsy Cline in Karel Reisz's Sweet Dreams (1985) and as a lawyer who defends her father and discovers his past in Music Box (1989). Other important films include Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991) (as a frightened housewife) and Tony Richardson's Blue Sky (1994), for which she won a Best Actress Academy Award as the mentally unbalanced wife of a military officer. She made her Broadway debut in 1992, playing "Blanche" in Tennessee Williams "A Streetcar Named Desire".
- IMDb mini biography by: Thanassis Agathos<thanaga@hol.gr

Jessica has three children: Aleksandra "Shura" Lange Baryshnikov (b. March 5, 1981) by Mikhail Baryshnikov; Hannah Jane Shepard (b. January 11, 1986) and Samuel Walker Shepard (b. June 14, 1987) by Sam Shepard.
Had a long time relationship with Sam Shepard (1982-2009).
Her performance as Frances Farmer in Frances (1982) is ranked #85 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.
Everywhere Jessica travels, she tries to find a cemetery. She says they're the most mysterious beautiful places.
Between modeling jobs, she waitressed at the Lion's Head in Greenwich Village.

It took Sydney Pollack a long time to get me to do Tootsie (1982). I asked myself if I wanted to play some frothy, ditzy character after I had just done Frances (1982). Obviously, I'm thrilled that I did.
All through life, I've harbored anger rather than expressed it at the moment. Once I started on Frances (1982), I discovered it was literally a bottomless well. It devastated me to maintain that for eighteen weeks, to be immersed in this state of rage for twelve to eighteen hours a day. It spilled all over, into other areas of my life. I was really hell to be around.
[on what counts in her career] Box office success has never meant anything. I couldn't get a film made if I paid for it myself. So I'm not 'box office' and never have been, and that's never entered into my kind of mind set. It is the kind of acknowledgment by other actors, really. That's really what is most meaningful.
For me, acting was always a way to explore emotions - to dip into the well and really try to reach rock bottom down there.
Coming out of the '60s, when it was still the last gasp of bohemia, I just never thought in terms of career or profession.