Jessica Lange

Jessica Phyllis Lange is an American actress and photographer whose career spans over five decades. Known for her performances on stage, screen, and television, she is one of the few performers to achieve Triple Crown of Acting status. Her accolades include two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, along with nominations for a BAFTA Award and a Laurence Olivier Award.

Lange was born on April 20, 1949, in Cloquet, Minnesota, to Albert John Lange, a teacher and traveling salesman, and Dorothy Florence, a housewife. She has two older sisters and a younger brother. Her paternal ancestry is German and Dutch, while her maternal ancestry is Finnish. Due to her father's work, her family moved more than a dozen times within Minnesota before returning to 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 Spanish photographer Paco Grande. They married in 1970, and Lange left college to travel across the United States, Mexico, and Paris. While in Paris, she studied mime theater under Étienne Decroux and danced with the Opéra-Comique. Upon returning to the United States, she studied acting with Mira Rostova and at HB Studio in New York City.

After working as a fashion model for the Wilhelmina agency and as a waitress in Greenwich Village, Lange was discovered by producer Dino De Laurentiis and made her film debut in the 1976 remake of King Kong. The role earned her the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year. She went on to appear in All That Jazz in 1979 and starring opposite Jack Nicholson in The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1981. In 1982, Lange became the first performer in 40 years to receive two Academy Award nominations in the same year, earning a Best Actress nomination for Frances and winning Best Supporting Actress for her role in Tootsie.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Lange secured additional Academy Award nominations for her work in Country (1984), Sweet Dreams (1985), and Music Box (1989). In 1994, she starred as a bipolar housewife in Blue Sky, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress as well as a Golden Globe Award. Her other feature film credits include Crimes of the Heart, Cape Fear, Night and the City, Losing Isaiah, Rob Roy, A Thousand Acres, Cousin Bette, Big Fish, and Broken Flowers.

Lange made her Broadway debut in 1992 playing Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, later reprising the role in a 1995 television adaptation that brought her a fourth Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination. She won her first Primetime Emmy Award for the 2009 HBO movie Grey Gardens and gained renewed recognition starring in FX's American Horror Story, winning two additional Emmys. Her television career also includes O Pioneers!, Normal, Feud: Bette and Joan, The Politician, and The Great Lillian Hall. On stage, she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the 2016 revival of Long Day's Journey into Night, and returned to Broadway in Mother Play in 2024. As a photographer, she has published five books.

Beyond her artistic endeavors, Lange has been a foster parent. She also serves as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, focusing on HIV/AIDS initiatives in Russia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.