From the Archives: Jessica Lange

"Finding a new way to work again is what I'd like to do because you get lulled into working the same way…into working the way you know how and the way you've worked for the last 20 years. What I'd really like to do is, starting with the next project, really approach it as starting brand new, as though I'm doing it for the first time, and see what that brings." - Jessica Lange

Jessica Lange has two Oscars, has been nominated four other times and is highly regarded as one of cinema's great actresses. Yet in her forties and now at 50, the period when many of her peers have either faded into obscurity or resigned themselves to the familiar, Lange has been taking more and more challenges. Her latest risk is Julie Taymor's daring adaptation of Shakespeare's most violent and bloodiest work, Titus. Lange is Tamora, Queen of the Goths, who pleads with Titus to spare her son then exacts a cruel revenge upon him and his own when he doesn't. The film features awe-inducing visuals and a lion's share of blood and mayhem, not to mention rape and cannibalism. Taymor also mixes time periods, with ancient Rome brushing up against the Mussolini era with rock and roll and heavy metal thrown in.

"I figure I have nothing more to lose at this point," Lange says of her involvement in such an audaciously inventive project. "[My] body of work is there. I don't feel like I have to worry about career choices. To tell you the truth, I never did," she laughs. "But I figure to stay interested in [acting], I've just got to keep trying stuff I've never tried before."

Still, it was daunting for someone who'd never done Shakespeare in her career, not even in an acting class. Lange was seduced by the prospect of working with Taymor, whose avant-garde reimagining of The Lion King had galvanized Broadway; Alan Cumming, whose Tony Award-winning performance in Cabaret she had recently seen; and Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins, who plays Titus. With all the elements in place, Lange decided to jump right in. "I figured you can't be an actor and not do it at some point in your life," she says. "It's ridiculous to be intimidated by the language or the historical character or whatever."

What seemed more intimidating was the costumes she had to wear, which included a gold breastplate, chain mail gowns and a headdress of knives Tamora dons as she attempts to convince a possibly insane Titus that she and her two remaining sons are the incarnations of Rape, Revenge and Murder. There was also the elaborate body makeup, which would sometimes take up to five hours to apply. "It was tedious," she acknowledges. Lange goes on to admit her doubts about the over-the-top costumes. "There were moments," she laughs, "like Rape, Revenge and Murder where I thought, I just don't think I'm going to pull this off - these cones and these big breasts and the tube coming out of the nipple."

Though there were certain parts of the characters she could connect to, Lange often found it difficult to follow Shakespeare's transitions. "There are big gaps [in the story] where you think he must not have done a second draft," she laughs. "How does [Tamora], who has behaved so intelligently and who has been so astute, how does she make this leap then to believe that she has actually convinced Titus, who is of equal intelligence and just as formidable, that she is the goddess of revenge? So you have to just sometimes jump in without regard for the rational thought."

Lange, who has played numerous complicated women, was attracted to Tamora's complexity and strength. "[She] is as formidable as any man in the story. She can be just as wicked, she can be just as violent, she can be just as passionate, just as intelligent. It was fun to play somebody that had no checks and balances, nothing was diminutive about her. When she turns on them, she turns on them with the force of a fury."

Which posed a dilemma for Lange, a mother of three, who had to portray a character whose limit for revenge knows no bounds. Tamora, a woman, urges her sons to rape Titus' daughter and leave her for dead. "When she turns, I think she begins to lose her mind because there are certain things you can't explain - like how someone could go from being that maternal force then suddenly provoke her children into committing this crime that basically is so destructive. So what she's done is sacrificed her two boys in this idea of vengeance. It's the cruelest thing a parent could do."

Lange observes that for all the violence in the film, Titus ultimately does not advocate it. "What's interesting to me about the play is whatever violence is perpetrated on the victim, that violence is suffered just as much by the perpetrators. [Titus] is really a dissertation on the effects of violence, and that is as valid today as it was then. This piece [is] so contemporary, although the methods have gone out of style in favor of gun violence. But what I don't think contemporary films that deal with violence, what they never show is the effects of violence, and that's what this film really is all about."