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S S Lange Biography & Facts

Jessica Phyllis Lange (; born April 20, 1949) is an American actress. Known for her performances on stage and screen she has received numerous accolades and is one of the few performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, having received two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, along with five Golden Globe Awards and one Screen Actors Guild Award. Lange made her professional film debut in the remake King Kong (1976) which, despite receiving mixed reviews, earned her the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year. Lange went on to receive two Academy Awards, her first for Best Supporting Actress as a soap opera star in the comedy Tootsie (1982) and her second for Best Actress playing a bipolar housewife in Blue Sky (1994). Her other Oscar-nominated roles were for Frances (1982), Country (1984), Sweet Dreams (1985), and Music Box (1989). Her other film roles include All That Jazz (1979), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Crimes of the Heart (1986), Cape Fear (1991), Rob Roy (1995), and Big Fish (2003). As her screen career started to decline, Lange transitioned into television starring in O Pioneers! (1992), A Streetcar Named Desire (1995), and Normal (2003). In 2010, Lange won her first Primetime Emmy Award for her portrayal of Big Edie in the HBO movie Grey Gardens (2009). Lange then gained new recognition by starring in FX's horror anthology, American Horror Story (2011–2015, 2018), which earned her two additional Primetime Emmys for its first and third seasons. She received her ninth Emmy Award nomination for her portrayal of Joan Crawford in the miniseries Feud (2017). In 2016, Lange won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the Broadway revival of the Eugene O'Neill play Long Day's Journey into Night.Lange returned to Broadway in 2024, and is currently starring in Paula Vogel's Mother Play. Lange is also a photographer with five published books of photography. She has been a foster parent and holds a Goodwill Ambassador position for UNICEF, specializing in HIV/AIDS in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Russia. Early life and education Jessica Phyllis Lange was born on April 20, 1949, in Cloquet, Minnesota. Her father, Albert John Lange, was a teacher and traveling salesman, and her mother, Dorothy Florence (née Sahlman), was a housewife. She has two older sisters, Jane and Ann, and a younger brother, George. Her paternal ancestry is German and Dutch, her maternal ancestry Finnish. Due to the nature of her father's professions, her family moved more than a dozen times to various towns and cities in Minnesota before settling down in her hometown, where she graduated from Cloquet High School. In 1967, she received a scholarship to study art and photography 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, traveling 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 theater under the supervision of Étienne Decroux and joined the Opéra-Comique as a dancer. She later studied acting with Mira Rostova and at HB Studio in New York City. Career 1976–1989: Breakthrough and acclaim While living in Paris, Lange was discovered by fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez and became a model for the Wilhelmina modelling agency. In 1973, she returned to the U.S. and began work in New York City as a waitress at the Lion's Head Tavern in Greenwich Village. While modeling, Lange was discovered by Hollywood producer Dino De Laurentiis, who was looking to cast an ingenue for his remake of King Kong. Lange made her film debut in the 1976 King Kong, beating actresses Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn for the role of damsel-in-distress. Despite the film's success – it was the fifth-highest-grossing film of 1976 and received an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects – it and Lange's performance were widely panned. But film critic Pauline Kael wrote, "The movie is sparked by Jessica Lange's fast yet dreamy comic style. [She] has the high, wide forehead and clear-eyed transparency of Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey, [and] one liners so dumb that the audience laughs and moans at the same time, yet they're in character, and when Lange says them she holds the eye and you like her, the way people liked Lombard." Lange won the 1976 Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year. She remained a favorite of Kael, who later wrote, "She has a facial structure that the camera yearns for, and she has talent, too." At the close of the decade, Bob Fosse, whom Lange had befriended and with whom she had carried on a casual romantic affair, cast Lange as Angelique, the Angel of Death, a part he had written for her in his semi-autobiographical film All That Jazz (1979). She was also considered for the role of Wendy Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's horror film The Shining (1980) before it went to Shelley Duvall. Lange began the new decade in the light romp How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980), co-starring Jane Curtin and Susan Saint James, which received mostly negative reviews and quickly disappeared from theaters. A year later, director Bob Rafelson contacted her about a project he was working on with Jack Nicholson, who had recently auditioned Lange for Goin' South (1978). Rafelson paid Lange a visit in upstate New York, where she was doing summer stock theater and has recounted how he watched her conversing on the telephone for half an hour before their meeting when he decided he had found the lead for his film. After meeting Lange, he wrote her name down on a piece of paper, placed it in an envelope, and sealed it. After several meetings and auditions with other actresses (though Rafelson had already made his decision, he feared he had done so too quickly and wanted to make sure his choice was right), the final choice was between Lange and Meryl Streep. In the end, Rafelson offered Lange the lead role opposite Nicholson in his remake of the classic film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). Upon offering her the part, he gave her the sealed envelope in which he had placed the piece of paper with her name on it. The film received mixed reviews, but Lange was highly praised for her performance. While editing The Postman Always Rings Twice, Graeme Clifford realized he had found the leading lady for his next film, his first as a director: a biographical film of actress Frances Farmer, whose disillusionment with Hollywood and chaotic family background led her down a tragic path. Filming Frances (1982), which co-starred Kim Stanley and Sam Shepard, was a grueling experience for Lange, who pored over the screenplay scene by scene, making deep and often taxing connections between her life and Farmer's to tap into the well of emotions the role required. By the end of the shoot, she was physically and mentally spent, a.... Discover the S S Lange popular books. Find the top 100 most popular S S Lange books.