Belle de jour
Source: The Observer
Date: Jan. 28, 2007
by Chrissy Iley
She
has a riveting presence, a nervous energy, yet she looks as
if she's made an effort to be nondescript. Non-fashion jeans,
blue baggy top, coloured hair, soft and clean but not in a
particular style. She has a pussycat nose and feline smile.
She's looking at a manicured image of herself that will be
used in the first posters to sell the play The Glass Menagerie.
She's a little disturbed. She twitches and says in a plaintive
voice to the avuncular theatrical impresario Bill Kenwright:
'Why do we have this big picture of me? What about the rest
of the cast?'
Can it be that she really doesn't get it? That
she's the star. She's the sell. She seems self-conscious and
I wonder if she's going to be brittle, fragile, snappy. But
then there's also a softness to her and a warmth. Kenwright
says, 'Most actresses would be demanding their picture was
made bigger. With her it's the opposite. No razzmatazz, no
chauffeur-driven cars. She's very much jeans and T-shirts
to the rehearsal, committed to the project.'
As she reaches for her water. I see a tattoo
on her wrist. It seems incongruous. Jessica Lange, femme fatale,
Tennessee Williams ethereal heroine; the last person you'd
expect to have a tattoo.
Much later on, when she's more at ease, she
tells me randomly that Aperture magazine is publishing some
of her photographs. 'The camera affords me a kind of anonymity.
I like being behind the camera, watching. I've always liked
that. I don't like being observed much... and do it for a
living.' She has a long easy laugh at this admission. Is it
because you're not confident in your looks, I say - and instantly
wish I hadn't. She was, of course, delectable, gorgeous, and
it's not to say that she isn't striking now. But maybe this
is all about lost youth. 'No, it's not that. You get a period
where your face really begins to change. It's one of those
transitions and it takes a while to get used to and then you
are used to it. I'm going to be 58 in April.'
The walk up to Kenwright's office has wall upon
wall of theatre posters. Jessica with a Twenties marcel wave
and haunted eyes peers out of many of them. This London revival
of the Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie
will be the fourth time she's worked with him. The first time
was when he put on A Streetcar Named Desire. It was
Lange's second incarnation of Blanche. Dangerous and vulnerable,
Kenwright says: 'She was mesmeric. If there are two or three
better actresses than Jessica, I've yet to meet them. I'm
also very aware that she could be doing movies instead of
the London stage, so I'm very grateful.'
Perhaps, I suggest, theatre has more range and
is more interesting for women in their fifties. 'I'm not sure
it's to do with my age or the age,' Lange says, 'but yes,
theatre affords much more interesting roles. In movies, if
you look at what's come out this year, there's only been Volver,
Notes on a Scandal and The Queen that have
had interesting parts for women. Fifteen years ago there were
many more women's roles that were great. So I'm not sure if
it's a natural kind of evolution to do with one's age or whether
something has shifted in films, but I can't just make a decision
to do a film now because I haven't worked for a year.'
She says this with a hollow laugh because in
the past this is what she has done. In her film roles she
has shone brightest playing neurotic, sexy sirens on the verge
of self-destruction. Sometimes they actually destroy themselves,
as with Frances Farmer; sometimes they are flecked with a
little more sexy survivor spirit. She was nominated for an
Oscar for her portrayal of the tragic country singer Patsy
Cline in Sweet Dreams (1985). She won her first Oscar
in 1982 for Tootsie: she played the sweet-faced love
interest of Dustin Hoffman, who spent most of the movie dressed
as a woman. Her second was for her role as the super-stressed
military wife of Tommy Lee Jones in Blue Sky (1994).
Goldie Hawn famously quipped that there are
three ages for actresses: the babe, the district attorney
and Driving Miss Daisy. She laughs. 'There's definitely an
element of that. And the district attorney has never interested
me too much, not unless they have a dark secret...' She shakes
her head, remembering with amusement, not bitterness: 'There
are so many things I shouldn't have done. I mean, quite a
few movies.' Like what? 'Just, wooh.' A warm, gurgling wooh
is what she says when she doesn't want to be pinned down but
she doesn't want to be brittle or cold.
So she is known for her dark-edged, fragile
characters. 'Those are the only characters that interest me,
those that walk the edge.' She's said in the past that she's
suffered bouts of depression herself, so maybe connecting
to these characters with their exaggerated sense of tragedy
is some kind of therapy for her. She once said, 'Every time
I think about Frances, Blanche and Mary, I think: there but
for the grace of God go I.' She says, 'Yeah, there has been
black stuff in me, but I don't allow myself to go there.'
She has in fact a couple of films coming up.
One is Cheri, an adaptation by the brilliant Christopher
Hampton of the story by Colette (which is incidentally being
produced by Kenwright). It's about an ageing courtesan and
how she tries to hang on to her young lover. Next up will
be Grey Gardens, which is the story of the Beales
- a wealthy society mother and daughter who were aunt and
cousin to Jackie Kennedy. Drew Barrymore is set to play the
daughter to Lange's mother in the film, which spans 40 years.
Lange ages from 37 to 77.
Lange's movie presence has always had a sweetness
and a sadness and Jack Nicholson, who worked with her in 1981
in The Postman Always Rings Twice, has described
her as 'a cross between a fawn and a Buick'. She screws her
nose up. 'That thing's been floating around for 26 years.
The Buick's solid survivor spirit and the fawn's... well...'
She does an impression with her arms in front of her as a
graceful shy fawn, maybe because she can't bring herself to
describe herself as a fawn. So is she in touch with her inner
Buick or inner fawn?
'Inner Buick, definitely. There are extremes
in all of us, aren't there?'
It seems that Lange feels comfortable in extremes.
She lives now in New York, in the city, but grew up in rural
Minnesota. She went to college in Minneapolis, then to New
York and then Paris on a pilgrimage to bohemia, a rebellion
against her homespun roots. At 20 she married photographer
Paco Grande. They had met in an art class in Minneapolis.
In Paris she studied mime and dance. She looks dreamy as she
recalls it. She came back to New York to be shaken up and
down in the paw of the gorilla in the first remake of King
Kong. Deeply uncomfortable in bimbodom, she dug herself
out of it. A few years later, in 1979, Bob Fosse cast her
as the angel of death in his memoir All That Jazz.
She was ethereal and he fell in love with her. Next was Mikhail
Baryshnikov, the greatest dancer of his age. Then in 1982
she met Sam Shepard on the set of Frances. It seems
she was always attracted to genius. He was then mostly acting,
but has since become revered as a writer and director.
They are still together but have never married.
In fact she has only been married once. Was one husband enough?
'It just didn't seem necessary. Sam and I have been together
23 years, so it's not like I don't feel married. The legal
thing never seemed important. The commitment is to Sammy.
The average marriage lasts seven years. I've done well.'
She has only worked with Shepard a couple of
times. More often she has acted in plays that he has written.
They are usually dark. Exactly the kind of play she likes.
She has said before that Frances was her most emotionally
demanding role. Beautiful Frances was gorgeously self-destructive,
compellingly so. Was it hard to have such a demanding role
and have what must have been an emotionally demanding love
affair?
'Yes,' she laughs. 'It was a very vulnerable
time, very emotional. There was a lot going on, let's put
it that way.' She laughs a little more feverishly and you
get to sense a bit of the cauldron that must have been going
on. She looks to the side as if she's looking at her former
self playing it out; a movie of her life, a woman that felt
things so acutely but who seems to have grown a thicker skin.
So which was more emotionally demanding? 'Playing
Frances was definitely more demanding than meeting Sam. Frances
was a huge thing to jump into. The affair was fun. A great
love affair is a great love affair. They are wonderful.' She
tosses her hair back. And terrible, I say. 'I guess,' she
says, but not really seeming to identify with that, or at
least not choosing to. I had read that, in the past, if her
life was too peaceful she liked to use a metaphorical Magimix
to mix things up a little. I read that she enjoyed any extreme
of emotion as long as it was passionate - either negative
or positive, that's how she knew it was love. When I remind
her of this she laughs extremely loudly, maybe embarrassed,
maybe relieved, maybe just joyful as she conjures that part
of herself. 'Yeah. I think there was that part of my life,
but hopefully that era has come to an end - of wanting everything
at high pitch all the time. As you get older the last thing
you want is an emotional hurricane, being in the eye of the
storm all the time.' Did she mix things up on purpose or subconsciously?
'I don't know, but certainly mixing things up, although I
don't think I've ever been self-destructive.'
She says she's never been interested in bad
boys, attracted to that kind of damage. 'Let's say I've always
been interested in very big men. Not big physically, but big
emotionally.' She's still laughing as she's recalling her
own big emotions, a real vicarious thrill from her own past.
You had some great boyfriends, I say. 'I sure
did.' Are you friends with your exes? 'Very close. We spend
time together. We see each other.' Even when you were with
one and you left that one for another one? She just giggles.
'The main men in my life I'm close with.' By this she means
her husband Paco Grande. She still refers to him as 'my husband.'
And Baryshnikov, who is the father of her daughter Shura,
25. 'I love them dearly. They are good people.'
Why do you think things didn't work out? 'Oooh,'
she says. What she means is: don't go there. 'Things change,
and when you're young you're kind of careless.' Have you changed?
'I think, a lot. My children changed me.' She has two more
with Sam - Hannah, 21, and Walker, 19. 'It gives you a perspective
that you didn't have before. You are no longer the centre
of the universe. It really opened my heart, made me a different
person. Every decision you make, every move you make, is with
someone else in mind. I never worked when the kids were young,
and then they were always with me. Literally on the set, in
my dressing room, in the trailer being tutored, always there.'
In the beginning of her acting career she felt
completed by it. Then she felt completed by her children.
At the time when there were the most juicy, sexy roles was
the very time she wasn't particularly interested in acting.
'I was always happier when I was with my children. Ninety
per cent of the time I'd rather be with my children.' She
once said she only wanted one word on her tombstone: 'Mother'.
When in your life were you most happy? She pauses
to give it real thought. 'So many different extremes. Those
years of living in Paris and being completely free and young,
so romantic and exciting. That was a very happy time. And
being home and with the family, having my children. That was
sublimely happy in a different way. This Christmas I had the
whole family together in my cabin in Minnesota and I thought:
"I can't remember when I've ever been this happy."
Everything about it felt so natural, so pleasurable. Your
ideas about happiness change.'
So what is your current concept of happy? 'Today
was a good day. We did good work. We began rehearsals. It's
exciting, the beginning of a project. It's pretty simple stuff
that makes me happy now. To know that my kids are well and
safe. To be with the people I love. And now I think of travelling
more and more. I can envisage that now my kids have left home.
It allows me that space.'
Was it a sad space when they left? 'This year
was a hard year.' There's a sudden change of mood - you feel
her inner sadness as opposed to her inner Buick. 'My last
child went to college, and for the first time in 25 years
my day did not revolve around a child. Even when they grew
older I was always thinking: "I've got to get home to
cook dinner." I felt horrible,' she says emphatically,
as if this is the thing she's most certain about and she somehow
enjoys the intensity of this certainty. 'It was a huge loss.
At first I didn't know what I would do. But I'm getting there.
I'm getting better.'
The children will come to visit in London and
Sam will be directing one of his plays in Dublin for part
of the time. His work is often very dark. Is it easy to live
with someone who has such darkness, or is he only dark in
his writing? 'I wouldn't call Sammy easy-going and funny,
but everybody has their dark side, and he always does it with
a sense of humour. He isn't a dark presence in the home.'
Maybe she likes a man to be a little brooding? 'Yes, a little
brooding is all right. But not someone who broods all the
time. In recent years I've tried to get to grips with the
idea that you can actually choose to be happy. Not if there
are extraneous circumstances, things that happen that make
you really sad, but you can choose not to let things affect
you negatively. I've always had such a quick temper. I realise
now it's such a waste of energy. You can actually choose to
let things roll off you a little more.'
From time to time she dips into Buddhism, from
where, no doubt, some of these ideas stem. 'It's been a discipline
that makes sense more than anything because it's like a science.
I've never been a religious person. I've always looked for
some kind of spiritual meaning. I didn't grow up going to
church. My mother's family were atheists and my father's side
was confused. He had been raised Catholic, but did not practise
it. His mother converted to Mormonism very late in life, so
there was no set religion.'
Her father seems one of those men with big emotions.
He threw her off the dock to teach her to swim. Was he drunk?
'No, it was his way of teaching me. It was scary, but it wasn't
like he endangered his children.' He gave her the sink-or-swim
mentality, the survivor bit, the Buick? 'Probably.' He certainly
gave her an adrenalin rush. 'The first time I rode a horse
he gave it a smack on the ass and the horse ran off and he
expected you to hold on, and I did. Years later I was a pretty
good horsewoman, but it wasn't because of that.' She laughs,
throws her hand up for a stretch and I ask her about the tattoo.
'It has to do with the circular nature of life.
I have another tattoo on my hip of a crescent moon. I got
that when I arrived in Paris. I went to Bruno's in Pigalle.
That was when Pigalle was really Pigalle, you know, sailors
and rough trade. You could have the last supper or crucifixion
or ships sinking. It had no special meaning except it was
the smallest on offer and I'd arrived in Paris and it was
great. My oldest daughter has the same Celtic knot.' Was it
a special bonding? 'No, she asked me to come with her because
she needed parental approval and that was her way of getting
a tattoo without written permission, as she was only 16.'
So something that was completely random is permanent. She
laughs hard in acceptance.
I leave Lange with a great feeling of warmth.
She's created an illusion of intimacy. I have the feeling
that I know more than she's actually told me. That she has
in some way revealed herself, that she has been vulnerable.
Kenwright confirms this when he says, 'One of her greatest
assets is her warmth, the feeling of intimacy that she can
create in a theatre.' It's not just her fragility or her strength
or a mixture of the two that makes her mesmerising, it's her
ability to create intimacy on stage and off.
· Jessica Lange will be appearing in
The Glass Menagerie at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue,
London W1, from 31 January to 19 May. Box office: 0870 890
1101; 0870 040 0080
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