Oscar-winner a fish out of water in Hollywood

By BRIAN VINER

My assignation with Jessica Lange takes place in the bowels of the Lyric Theatre in London, where she is appearing to ecstatic reviews in Eugene O'Neill's powerhouse of a play, Long Day's Journey into Night. There is a vase of dying roses on a table and on the mantelpiece stands a half-full bottle of Remy-Martin. Whether it is for visitors, or to give her a last-minute slug of confidence before her nightly transformation into the epically anguished Mary Tyrone, I do not ask.

Lange has tousled hair and wears no makeup. She looks her 51 years, and yet her beauty is undiminished. She smokes a lot, never diets and lives on a ranch in her home state of Minnesota. No wonder she feels like a fish out of water in Hollywood.

For such a resolute outsider, she has had stupendous success at the Oscars, winning in 1982 for Tootsie and 1994 for Blue Sky, and receiving four further nominations. She could, if she had chosen, have become a huge star.

"But I would have been miserable doing parts that didn't fascinate me," she says. "Tootsie opened doors for me, afforded me that golden moment when they invite you to do anything you want. But I did not capitalise commercially and I have no regrets about that."

None? Is there nobody she would love to have worked with, or still yearns to work with? A long pause. "Pacino. I always wanted to work with him. I love that dangerous quality of acting." She could have played Frankie to his Johnny, I venture, instead of Michelle Pfeiffer. She recoils. "Uggh. Not a good film."

Certainly Frankie and Johnny lacked the sexual electricity that crackled through The Postman Always Rings Twice, in which Lange and Jack Nicholson showed the rest of us that we're just not using our kitchen tables properly.

She was wonderfully sexy in Tootsie, too, but she does torment even better. Her last appearance on the West End stage was as Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, produced by her friend Bill Kenwright. And she has played no end of damaged women on screen, not least the tragic 1930s actress Frances Farmer, in the remarkable 1982 film Frances.

"Women on the edge do appeal to me," she says. "Their emotional swings make for tremendous variety. Even after playing Blanche for 14 weeks, I felt I never exhausted the character. Mary Tyrone is the same."

Lange has said, "There's a lot of very black stuff in me." Acting enables her to confront her demons. "Whenever I think about Frances and Blanche and Mary," she adds, "I think there but for the grace of God go I."

It is not so much the grace of God as parenthood, however, which she credits for keeping her sane. She and her partner, the playwright and actor Sam Shepard, have a boy and a girl, aged 13 and 14.

She also has a 19-year-old daughter, Alexandra, from her relationship with the Russian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. "She looks exactly like her father, and has the same brooding Russian temperament, the same quixotic talent. My boy is just like his dad, just like Sam. And my second daughter has Sam's intelligence, his way of seeing things, and a very interesting sense of humour."

It is not hard to understand why she attracts such artistic giants as Shepard and Baryshnikov. Her lovers have also included the choreographer Bob Fosse and the Spanish film-maker Paco Grande, to whom she was briefly married.

Does she still see Baryshnikov?

"Oh yes. We have a daughter together, which binds us for life."

What did she find so appealing about him?

"Why do you fall in love with anyone? I don't know. It was a great love, but we were both very young ... 25, 26. He had just come over from Russia. I met him before I saw him dance, in fact I wasn't even aware of his reputation."

Was it love at first sight?

"It was immediate, yes."

As for Shepard, he is clearly a kindred spirit. They eschew celebrity with equal fervour, although they publicly and energetically endorsed Al Gore's presidential campaign.

"I still find it hard to believe that so many people voted for George W," she says.

"There is a certain mentality in the United States that bothers me tremendously. The idea that Bush is as dumb as us, as inarticulate, as inexperienced, as lazy, so let's vote for him. He has made just one trip to Europe, spends approximately four minutes determining whether someone should be put to death, and his environmental policies in Texas are not only shameful, they should be criminal.

"I dislike the man tremendously."

So, we know who she loathes. But who does she revere? She smiles. "Who do I put on a pedestal? Apart from Bob Dylan? Tennessee Williams." Before I go, I want to hear her assessment of the Hollywood she has increasingly shunned.

"I haven't seen a good part in a studio movie for a long time. When I think of the directors who were around when I got started - Altman at his best, Scorsese at his best, Coppola - there is nobody like that now. And I think there has long been a dearth of interesting actors.

"But you know, it is not often that an actor and a part meet head on." Has it happened to her?

"Yes, with Frances, and Blue Sky. And I feel it now, with Mary Tyrone."