With only three performances remaining in Broadway's Long Day's Journey Into Night which closes this Sunday, here's Eric to talk Jessica Lange's long and awards-full career.
Jessica Lange recently became the 22nd actor to complete the official Triple Crown of Acting (performers who have won competitive Oscar, Tony, and Emmy Awards - full list prior to Jessica). It’s an exciting moment in time, as winning the big three isn’t easy.
Ten of her Triple Crown peers are still alive and all working to one degree or another: Rita Moreno, Jeremy Irons, Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith, Al Pacino, Geoffrey Rush, Ellen Burstyn, Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, and Frances McDormand. All of these actors have had decades-long success and still get enough offers for splashy roles that it’s not inconceivable that almost any of them could win another late-career major award.
As it stands, of all the 22 current Triple Crown winners, nobody has amassed more than six total competitive awards across the three fields of film, television, and theater. The folks with six are Ingrid Bergman (3 Oscars, 2 Emmys; 1 Tony); Shirley Booth (1 Oscar, 2 Emmys, 3 Tonys); Maggie Smith (2 Oscars, 3 Emmys, 1 Tony); Helen Mirren (1 Oscar, 4 Emmys, 1 Tony), and now Jessica Lange (2 Oscars, 3 Emmys, 1 Tony like Dame Maggie). At this point, Mirren and Lange, only three years apart (they’re 70 and 67, respectively) would break this (granted silly) awards record if they were to win one more of the Big Three prizes.
Now, on to Jessica's own 'Long Journey' to this triumph...
Jessica accepting her Tootsie (1982) Oscar
It took Lange 33 years to complete the Triple Crown, which puts her towards the long end compared to how long it took most others (only Jessica Tandy, Anne Bancroft, Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer, and Ellen Burstyn took longer). But one of the special things about Lange's story is that seven years ago, she had all but disappeared from major acting work of any kind. It’s only her resurgence on TV via Grey Gardens and then American Horror Story that got her back on track not only with the Emmy wins, but with acting in general.
Lange has had a fairly erratic career. She’s not had one major blockbuster film success outside of Tootsie. Her frequent employment through the 1980s and 90s are credit to her talent alone, as from a business perspective she was never considered “bankable” and always chose off-the-beaten-track projects.
Jessica's Oscar noms: TOOTSIE (win), FRANCES; COUNTRY; SWEET DREAMS; THE MUSIC BOX; BLUE SKY (win)
From The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1981 through to Oscar number two with Blue Sky in 1994, Lange delivered one leading-lady performance after another where her character was front and center and was never defined by her relationship to the central male character. In fact, two of Hollywood’s biggest leading men of the time (Ed Harris in Sweet Dreams and Tommy Lee Jones in Blue Sky) played second fiddle to her, something that rarely happens nowadays, and in turn both men gave two of their most subtle, intelligent, and detailed performances. Lange brings something out in both Harris and Jones that we don’t see in any other movie with them… the men know they are equally matched, and they’re forced to do their homework and find all the specific reasons they love their woman (rather than the generic “I guess he loves her because she’s pretty” substitute that is far more common). There’s nuance in their work, and genuine sexual fire; you never doubt in either film that the central characters fuck happily and healthily.
It’s a fairly universal consensus that had Meryl Streep not had Sophie’s Choice out in 1982, Lange would have won the Best Actress Oscar that year for Frances. That film was where we first saw Lange’s particular specialty: the mercurial powerhouse who swings from vulnerability to rage in a flash, always on the edge of something very dangerous. She’s played variations on this emotional scale ever since, mostly to gloriously interesting effect and occasionally to a parody of itself (there are times where Lange forgets she is not always playing Blanche DuBois).
But during the next decade after Frances, Lange delivered one indelible portrait after another: quietly crumbling in Country; exhilaratingly vibrant in Sweet Dreams; selfish and melancholy (and funny!) in Crimes of the Heart; sultry and steely in Everybody’s All-American; sad and haunted in Music Box. And then there’s Men Don’t Leave, arguably one of her actual best films, where she stays on the vulnerable side of her scale to heartbreaking effect. (Sidebar: whatever happened to Paul Brickman???)
Her Emmy Nods: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE; NORMAL; GREY GARDENS (win), AHS: MURDER HOUSE (win); AHS: ASYLUM; AHS: COVEN (win); AHS: FREAKSHOW
The fifteen years after winning Oscar number two weren’t generous to Lange, and she seemed to lose her passion for acting (she’s spoken about this in interviews). But Grey Gardens gave her something operatic to play once again, and that’s what Lange responds to best. She wants to go big or not go at all. It’s that go-for-broke trait that feeds all of us who love her. Even if she falls flat, at least she was doing something risky and interesting.
Which leads us to her Tony win two weeks ago. Lange has only come to Broadway three times, playing Blanche DuBois, Amanda Wingfield, and now Mary Tyrone. They’re arguably THE three biggest/hardest female roles in American dramatic theater, so even her detractors have to admit she’s ballsy. Her first two tries were met with varying levels of success (IMO, her Blanche was beautiful but her Amanda was a snooze), but it all came together for Lange this time with Mary Tyrone. It’s an unsentimental piece of acting where she nails the ethereal ghost-like quality of the character while giving us flashes of tremendous life and fight. She illuminates the blurred lines of love and hate, and the extremes the blur can take, with the precision of a surgeon but the expressiveness of an artist. And it’s glorious to see at age 67 that her patented sensuality is still alive and thriving.
It’s thrilling to see Lange in the game again. She’s joined an elusive club, one that all of us lovers of great acting know is much more compelling than the EGOT.
P.S. Last month it was announced that Lange will star with the amazing Naomi Watts in a film called The Lonely Doll. If this film ever really happens, how sweet will it be to see two women who were both held in the paw of King Kong together in one movie?