THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 12, 1995 TAG: 9504120034
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 144 lines
JESSICA LANGE HUGGED the golden statuette to her bodice as she tilted her head to one side, flashed a seemingly shy smile and talked about how happy she'd be to fly back to Virginia the next morning.
In the glare of the Oscar victory, for her star turn in ``Blue Sky,'' she could think only of ``getting back to ordinary things for awhile - like making the kids' breakfast and driving them to school.''
Lange brings another head-turning performance to the screen in the sweeping kilts-and-dagger epic ``Rob Roy,'' opening at local theaters today. She plays the earthy, noble Mary MacGregor, wife of Robert Roy MacGregor, the legendary Rob Roy (1671-1734) of Scottish history.
It's a far cry from her film debut as the girl with the ape in 1976's ``King Kong.'' She's now a two-time time Oscar winner and six-time nominee, and is one of the more respected actresses of her generation.
In between have been hard living and growth.
``I used to go into every role with a sense of dread,'' she said. ``A dread that I'd have to go through this. Now I see it as a kind of gift. It comes from coming from a place of ease rather than from a place of anxiety.''
Her haven is the cattle and horse ranch in Albemarle County, where she lives with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard. Her neighbors include Patricia Kluge and Sissy Spacek.
The new Oscar, for playing a nymphomanical military wife who sometimes liked to imitate Marilyn Monroe, is also in the homestead near Charlottesville now. ``Blue Sky'' was a little picture that was held out of release for three years when its company, Orion, went bankrupt.
``I never thought it would see the light of a theater, much less win an award,'' she said.
While she has publicly professed scorn for awards in the past, this year she sang a different tune.
``It's always thrilling, exciting to be nominated, and this year I really wanted to win because of the kids,'' Lange said, backstage on Oscar night. ``They are old enough now to know what it means, and I knew they were watching on television. I wanted to win for them.''
Moments after winning, she used a cellular phone to call Sam Shepard in Virginia to share her joy. They have lived together for 13 years and have two children, Hannah, 9, and Walker, 7. Mikhail Baryshnikov, the ballet superstar, is the father of her other child, Alexandra, 14 (whom she calls by the Russian nickname, Shura).
She has not married either man but declares ``I'm as married as anyone. We are a family.''
Some thought her career was over when she took two years off to linger in Virginia after her Broadway stint in Tennessee Williams' ``A Streetcar Named Desire'' in 1992. It was, however, a self-enforced exile. ``I've always been a little on the outskirts of the business,'' she said. ``I never really liked Hollywood. It's a company town where everyone knows everyone else's business. It's like the textile mill towns where I grew up in Minnesota.''
She added that ``in my entire career, I've made only one movie that could conceivably be called a really big commercial hit. That was `Tootsie' with Dustin Hoffman, and that was the movie that I fought against being in. I couldn't see any reason to do it. I only took the part after turning it down several times.''
Like it or not, she may break her own lackluster box office record with ``Rob Roy.'' It has scent of ``commercial hit'' blooming around it as fervently as the heather on the hill. She plays opposite Irish actor Liam Neeson, who has the title role.
``Mary MacGregor,'' she emphasizes, ``is very much the equal to her husband. She had a quick intelligence, a strength and vulnerability. I would react in the same way she did. As a mother and wife, my first thought would have been to protect the family.''
``Rob Roy'' contains a shocking rape scene in which Lange is attacked by Tim Roth, who plays the foppish villain. ``I can't say that it was the most difficult scene,'' Lange laughed. ``The assistant director was hidden under the table trying to keep it from shaking. There were people just out of sight. Tim and I would break out laughing between takes. It's just make-believe. The more subtle scenes were the more difficult to play. Lange, 45, was sitting in a hotel in Pasadena several days before the Oscars. Her honey-blond hair kept falling over her forehead as she brushed it back and expressed surprise at each and every question - as if she had never thought of the idea before. Traces of a Southern accent pop up in her speech occasionally - an accent she may have picked up in Virginia or as a holdover from her latest role, Blanche Dubois, in the upcoming CBS television movie ``A Streetcar Named Desire.''
``Blanche is perhaps the greatest role I've ever played,'' she said. ``I was lucky to be filming this during the past month because it kept my mind off the Oscars. I was very busy. But I'm a wreck. Blanche is like Frances Farmer. (The mentally ill actress she played in the film `Frances.') After `Frances,' I was almost insane. I couldn't just walk away from her. Robert De Niro, who starred with her in ``Cape Fear'' and ``Night and the City,'' once said, ``Jessica is mysterious. She's mercurial. She's not an easy person to get hold of - which is, I think, what is interesting about her.''
She was born in rural Minnesota and still claims that her only roots are there. ``There is nothing so binding as the family,'' she has said. ``The only time I feel I'm connected to something is with the family, even my extended family.'' Her ``date'' for each of the four Oscar ceremonies she has attended has been her brother.
Her father was a hard-drinking man who held many jobs and moved the family around Minnesota. She has said, ``I hated anything that seemed normal. I always was looking for something exotic - something unknown - at least something that would seem strange to northern Minnesota.''
She was an A student and got an art scholarship to attend college, but quit school to marry an avant garde Spanish photographer named Paco Grande. For a year, she lived with him in the back of a van that moved about the country. She calls it her ``hippie period.'' She left Grande to spend three years in Paris, studying mime with a disciple of Marcel Marceau.
Upon returning to New York, she worked as a waitress and model. There was a period when she literally didn't speak to anyone for months. She is unable, even today, to explain - saying it may have been merely shyness.
From nowhere, Dino De Laurentiis chose her as the leading lady for his expensive remake of ``King Kong.''
Suddenly, she was on the cover of Time Magazine. She likes to remember the time when a limousine came to pick her up at her tiny New York apartment. ``All the neighbors came out to see it and they liked to say, later, that `the limousine came to pick her up, and she never came back.' ''
An affair with director-choreographer Bob Fosse was publicized. She was cast as the Angel of Death in his autobiographical film ``All That Jazz.'' She was already the mother of Baryshnikov's child when she fell in love with Shepard while filming ``Frances'' in 1982.
``At first, I was so worried that no one would take me seriously,'' she said. ``I thought I was too pretty. Then, it seems like only a day later, I'm 45 and everyone asks me about aging. Now, there are younger actresses and they'll get some of the roles I might want. People ask why I don't get plastic surgery - a little nip or a tuck. I don't think so, although I've thought about it.
She admits to going house shopping in Scotland while filming ``Rob Roy,'' but didn't find what she wanted. ``I liked Scotland better than any place I've ever been, other than Minnesota,'' she said. She's built a house in Minnesota to use when visiting her family.
She has at least three movies in the planning stage. She is writing a script adapted from Jayne Anne Phillips's novel ``Machine Dreams'' and has bought the rights, along with Michelle Pfeiffer, to Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ``A Thousand Acres.'' She also hopes to make a movie of Colette's 1920 novel ``Cheri,'' about a middle-aged courtesan who teaches the art of love to a teenage boy.
``I once approached work only with a sense of dread,'' she said. ``Now, it's become something much more joyful. Everything I've done up until now has just been one long acting class.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Jessica Lange stars with Liam Neesom, right, in the sweeping epic
"Rob Roy".
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