Jessica Lange's Secret Passion

But for Lange, there was only one approach, the one she has chosen throughout her career: to throw herself into the part with unselfconscious abandon. “I said, ‘OK, you can’t second-guess yourself and you cannot be cautious... I’ve done this before with other parts, and I wanted to be reckless again, as an actor, instead of cautious.” It’s not hard to guess the roles to which Lange was referring. She memorably played Frances Farmer, the actresses who was unfairly committed in Frances, and Carly Marshall, the unstable housewife in Blue Sky. On stage, she inhabited Mary Tyrone, sunk deep into her morphine addiction, and Blanche DuBois, sunk just as deep into despair.

Famous as she is, she does not suffer from the syndrome of so many celebrities today. Jessica Lange the person with a personal life never eclipses Jessica Lange the actor in a role.

Lange has frequently portrayed women teetering on the edge, those who the world of the play calls crazy but the audience in the theater might not. Her specialty is the seemingly fragile woman with, as she calls it, “a spine of steel.” Big Edie Beale was no exception. “She said, 'Screw it, I’m going to do what I want to do.'” Lange particularly valued the part because meaty roles have become increasingly uncommon for actresses of a certain age. “At this age,” Lange says, “for an actress… to keep working at that level and quality of work that you used to… that’s rare now.”

Though she never says so explicitly, one wonders whether Lange’s serious pursuit of photography is an attempt to continue to make the highest quality work, albeit in a different medium. Her photographs are, in a word, impressive. Grainy black-and-white images, shot with a Leica M6 and without a flash at weird, unexpected angles, they project a discomfiting atmosphere of mystery. (You can view them here.) Looking at them, one feels simultaneously lonesome and connected. Many of her photos are intensely intimate (a couple embracing on a dance floor, a father dangling his daughter ), and it’s clear the actress is as talented at slipping into a situation and snapping a candid as she is at slipping into a character.

Perhaps, too, her photographs are an attempt to take control, to be, for once, the viewer rather than the viewed. Lange says as much: “The thing of constantly being observed, which you are as an actor, as a photographer, you’ve got that instrument, that camera, between you and whatever is your subject. I love the anonymity of photography.” Or, as punk poetess Patti Smith, who wrote the introduction to 50 Photographs by Jessica Lange, a compilation of her work, puts it: “As an actress, she has been captured by the same light she is drawn to.”

Amanda Fortini has written for The New Yorker, Slate, Elle, and New York, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles.