Jessica Lange

Lange's first film was the 1976 King Kong remake, which won her a Golden Globe for New Star but could have been a trap door. She spent the next decade proving range: a soap star in Tootsie (1982, supporting Oscar), a mentally ill Frances Farmer, a struggling farmer's wife in Country, Patsy Cline in Sweet Dreams. The second Oscar came twelve years later for Blue Sky (1994), playing a bipolar housewife. She threaded prestige film work - The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cape Fear, Big Fish - with a stage career that began in 1992 when she played Blanche DuBois on Broadway. In 2009 HBO's Grey Gardens brought her first Emmy, then Ryan Murphy cast her in American Horror Story's first season and she became the show's dark anchor through four cycles, winning twice more. At 67 she took the Tony for Long Day's Journey into Night, and in 2024 returned to Broadway in Mother Play.