'Find What Fascinates You'

AFTER SCORING EVERY MAJOR ACTING PRIZE, THE LEGENDARY STAR ISN'T DONE RISING TO NEW CHALLENGES

- JACK SMART

Jessica Lange has always taken big risks, from her film debut acting opposite a mechanical ape in 1976's King Kong to following in Faye Dunaway's massive Mommie Dearest footsteps and portraying larger-than-life screen icon Joan Crawford in the 2017 limited series Feud: Bette and Joan. The actress, 75, took another chance earlier this year when she headed to Broadway in Mother Play after only three weeks of rehearsal. "When I look back, it's just like, 'Oh my God, were we nuts?"" The gamble paid off.

Her performance as a woman who refuses to accept her gay son (played by Jim Parsons) earned Lange her second Tony Award nomination (she won in 2016 for Long Day's Journey Into Night). "It means the world," says Lange, who has two Oscars and three Emmys.

The Minnesota native and mom to Shura, 43 (with ex Mikhail Baryshnikov, 76), Hannah, 38, and Walker, 36 (with her late former partner Sam Shepard), also stuns as an actress losing her mental faculties in the new movie The Great Lillian Hall (on HBO May 31). "Every era in someone's life, it's important to find what still fascinates you," Lange explains of her varied résumé. Soon she'll take a well-deserved break. "I'm looking forward to going back to the country and trying to live a little more of a contemplative existence-at least for a while," she says. Before taking off, she talks to People about Mother Play, motherhood and making movies.

How did you approach playing a parent deep in denial in Mother Play?