Writing a biography of an actor is strangely like acting itself. At least that’s how I see it. You do your research. You immerse yourself in the world of your character, gathering every precious piece of the intricate puzzle that makes up a complex person. You empathize with them, try to understand what drives them, try to feel what they feel. This is a very intense process and can take many months; at some point, though, you have to just start writing. It’s like jumping off a cliff—you hope that the wind of creativity will carry you and let you soar through the process.
Along the way, you find out things you never knew. For no matter how well you think you know your subject, they always manage to surprise you. Writing about someone as multifaceted and elusive as Jessica Lange was always going to be a one-of-a-kind experience.
I first became aware of Lange as a young teenager. Things were not easy at home and at school, and I desperately needed something, anything, to carry me through. And then, there she was—Jessica Lange. My mother recorded a documentary feature, Jessica Lange: It’s Only Make-Believe, on a VHS tape, thinking I’d find Lange’s musings on her life and career interesting. I certainly did.
In subsequent years I sought out every film starring Lange I could lay my hands on, which, in the years before streaming, wasn’t always easy. Watching her performances in Music Box, Sweet Dreams, Blue Sky, and, especially, Frances were transformative experiences. The mixture of sensuality and restlessness, and those moments of inspired madness which only Lange can pull off, made every one of her films an absolute treat for me.
By the time I started writing the book, almost two decades later, I thought I had a pretty good knowledge of her life and work. But digging deeper, seeking out people who know her, or have known her at some point in her adventurous journey, made me discover a whole new landscape.
Writing about someone as multifaceted and elusive as Jessica Lange was always going to be a one-of-a-kind experience.
Aside from being a fascinating personage herself, Lange has lived through some of the most tumultuous events in recent times, rubbing shoulders with some of the most legendary figures from across the artistic spectrum. Starting with her time as a student in Minnesota at the height of the anti–Vietnam War movement, her life as a bohemian on a quest of self-discovery and artistic expression took her to many unexpected places.
Today, we live in a world where such quests are perhaps hard to fathom. This story takes place in an altogether different time. This is perhaps one thing that struck me most when writing this book: how different a world we live in today, and yet, certain similarities are also uncanny.
At 19, Lange abandoned her studies at the University of Minnesota and traveled to Europe with her then boyfriend (later to be her husband) Paco Grande. Writing the section that charts their trip was in itself an adventure, especially since I was lucky enough to have had Grande as a guide.
From the disappearing world of flamenco-dancing Gypsies in Andalusia to the unrest of Paris in 1968, to the excitement of Swinging London and the artistic communes of Amsterdam, Lange’s early years read like a kaleidoscope of psychedelic tripping. And it gets only more interesting from there—studying mime with an old master in Paris, mingling with the likes of Grace Jones, Antonio Lopez, Andy Warhol, and Robert Frank in New York—and all that long before she was ever cast in her first movie.
Listening to Grande recount their story, I felt transported to that extraordinary time. My hope is that the book affords its readers the same experience. “What we wanted, more than anything, was to be free,” Grande told me.
Lange’s early years read like a kaleidoscope of psychedelic tripping—studying mime with an old master in Paris, mingling with Grace Jones and Andy Warhol in New York.
That quest for freedom seems to have been a driving force for most of Lange’s early life, and arguably beyond. She and Grande embodied all the escapism of the 1960s counterculture. They were resentful of traditional values and of authority, and they saw settling down as a kiss of death to creativity.
In the summer of 1969, they sold all their possessions, bought a used Ford Econoline van, and set off on a Kerouac-esque trek across America. It was to be the first of many such trips Lange would undertake over subsequent decades. This was the summer of Woodstock—drugs, sex, and rock ’n’ roll were very much part of Lange and Grande’s reality, although, at the end of the day, they were very much loners too. Lange never truly belonged to any one group or tribe—moving through various worlds seamlessly but never allowing herself to settle.
Later, when living and studying in Paris, Lange became an occasional model and a muse for the renowned fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez. Mingling with the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent, she threw herself into the artistic hedonism of the moment, frequenting gay discotheques with Grace Jones by her side, yet even then, she never got lost in the intoxicating glamour of it all. It seems that she had always been aware that there was something more she needed to do, and to become.
While naturally it is her body of work which has assured her place among the most talented actors of her generation—and which led me to write a biography of her in the first place—it was in her life before fame where I found the most surprises and unexpected twists. I’d go as far as to say that the essence of those early days carried forward into her work, for each of her performances displays a depth and a certain quality of restless exploring which originated in those years of vagabonding.
In the words of director Remy Weber, whose kind contribution to the book made a huge difference, Jessica Lange is “a true, honest-to-god bohemian—one of the last ones remaining.”
Anthony Uzarowski’s Jessica Lange: An Adventurer’s Heart is out now from University of Kentucky Press
