People

Jessica Lange

Acting · follow into films and chains

Biography

Jessica Phyllis Lange (born April 20, 1949) is an American actress. She is the 13th actress to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, having won two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, along with a Screen Actors Guild Award and five Golden Globe Awards. Lange made her professional film debut in Dino De Laurentiis's 1976 remake of the 1933 action-adventure classic King Kong, for which she also won her first Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year. In 1979, she starred in the acclaimed musical film All That Jazz. In 1983, she won her second Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a soap opera star in Tootsie (1982) and was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of the troubled actress Frances Farmer in Frances (1982). Lange received three more nominations for Country (1984), Sweet Dreams (1985) and Music Box (1989), before winning her third Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as a bipolar housewife in Blue Sky (1994). In 2010, Lange won her first Primetime Emmy Award for her portrayal of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's aunt Big Edie in HBO's Grey Gardens (2009). Between 2011 and 2014, she won her first Screen Actors Guild Award, first Critics Choice Award, fifth Golden Globe Award, three Dorian Awards and her second and third Emmy Awards for her performances in the first, second and third seasons of FX's horror anthology series American Horror Story (2011–2015, 2018). In 2016, Lange won her first Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play for her performance in the Broadway revival of Long Day's Journey into Night. She also had a supporting role in Louis C.K.'s Peabody Award-winning web series Horace and Pete. In 2017, for her portrayal of actress Joan Crawford in the miniseries Feud, Lange received her eighth Emmy, 16th Golden Globe, sixth Screen Actors Guild Award and second TCA Award nominations. In 2019, she received a tenth Emmy nomination for her performance in American Horror Story: Apocalypse. Lange is also a photographer with four 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.

Notable films

Where to start

Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.

Tootsie

Appears in a KinoChain journey

All That Jazz

Appears in a KinoChain journey

Frances

Appears in a KinoChain journey

Big Fish

As Sandra Bloom (senior)

Cape Fear

As Leigh Bowden

The Gambler

As Roberta

The Postman Always Rings Twice

As Cora Papadakis

Broken Flowers

As Carmen

Chains

KinoChain journeys

Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.

Browse all chains

Double Trouble

From the Academy's rare double nods to the performances that earned them, this chain celebrates actors who competed against themselves in a single awards season...

8 films

The Path to La La Land & Its Legacy

A decade on from its 2016 debut, La La Land remains a landmark achievement in modern cinema: a dazzling, bittersweet love letter to big dreams and hard choices....

7 films

Related people