Jessica Lange

Jessica Lange was born on April 20, 1949, in Cloquet, Minnesota. She studied art at the University of Minnesota and married photographer Paco Grande in 1970. After traveling and modeling in Paris, she made her film debut as Dwan in Dino De Laurentiis's 1976 remake of King Kong. The highly publicized production brought her immediate attention, but its critical reception was uneven. Lange then pursued roles that challenged the glamorous image associated with that debut, developing a screen career notable for intensity, comic timing, and collaborations with major American directors and playwrights over the following decades in film and television.

Her breakthrough came with two 1982 performances. In Sydney Pollack's Tootsie, she played Julie Nichols, a soap-opera actor drawn to Michael Dorsey's female alter ego, Dorothy Michaels. The role earned Lange an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. That same year, she portrayed actor Frances Farmer in Frances, Bob Rafelson's drama about Farmer's career and psychiatric confinement. Her work in Frances brought her a Best Actress Oscar nomination, making her the first performer since 1943 to receive two acting nominations in one year. She later played country singer Patsy Cline in Karel Reisz's Sweet Dreams, and comedian Carly Marshall in Crimes.

In 1994, Lange won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Blue Sky, playing Carly Marshall, the volatile wife of an Army nuclear engineer portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones. The film, directed by Tony Richardson, was released after Richardson's death and after Orion Pictures' crisis delayed it. Lange appeared in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Music Box, Cape Fear, Rob Roy, A Thousand Acres, and Big Fish. Her work on stage included Blanche DuBois in the 1992 television adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire and Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey into Night on Broadway in 2000 opposite Charles Dance.

Lange expanded her television work with acclaimed performances in HBO's Grey Gardens, portraying Edith Bouvier Beale, known as “Big Edie,” opposite Drew Barrymore as her daughter. She won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the film. From 2011 through 2015, she was a central presence in several seasons of American Horror Story, playing characters including Constance Langdon, Sister Jude Martin, Fiona Goode, and Elsa Mars. Her television work also included Joan Crawford in Ryan Murphy's Feud: Bette and Joan. A longtime photographer, Lange published the photography books 50 Photographs and Highway 61 Revisited.