[2] Lange made her professional film debut in the remake King Kong (1976) which, despite receiving mixed reviews,[3] earned her the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.

[15][16] Due to the nature of her father's professions, her family moved more than a dozen times to various towns and cities in Minnesota before settling down in her hometown, where she graduated from Cloquet High School.

[25][26] Lange began the new decade in the light romp How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980), co-starring Jane Curtin and Susan Saint James, which received mostly negative reviews and quickly disappeared from theaters.

Rafelson paid Lange a visit in upstate New York, where she was doing summer stock theater and has recounted how he watched her conversing on the telephone for half an hour before their meeting when he decided he had found the lead for his film.

[28] By the end of the shoot, she was physically and mentally spent,[28] and decided to take Stanley's advice to do "something light," which led her to accept a supporting role opposite Dustin Hoffman in Sydney Pollack's Tootsie (1982).

The following year, she testified before the United States Congress on behalf of the Democratic House Task Force on Agriculture, alongside Jane Fonda and Sissy Spacek, whom she later befriended.

[30] At the close of 1985, she portrayed legendary country singer Patsy Cline in Karel Reisz's biopic Sweet Dreams, opposite Ed Harris, Ann Wedgeworth, Gary Basaraba, and John Goodman.

Streep has been quite vocal and adamant in her praise for Lange's performance,[33][34][35][36][37][38] calling her "beyond wonderful" in the film and saying, "I couldn't imagine doing it as well or even coming close to what Jessica did because she was so amazing in it.

"[39] Lange's films in the mid- to late 1980s, which included Crimes of the Heart (1986), Far North (1988), and Everybody's All-American (1989), were mostly low-profile and underperformed at the box office, though she was often singled out and praised for her work.

She began the decade in Paul Brickman's warmly received Men Don't Leave (1990), for which she earned positive reviews and came in third place for the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress.

[40] She was then approached by Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, who had both auditioned her for the role of Jake LaMotta's wife in Raging Bull (1980), to star in a remake of Cape Fear (1991).

In 1992, Lange once again starred opposite De Niro in Irwin Winkler's Night and the City, and in a television adaptation of Willa Cather's O Pioneers!, receiving her seventh Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.

Lange made her Broadway debut, which met mixed reviews portraying Blanche DuBois in a production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire opposite Alec Baldwin.

The same year, she reprised her role as Blanche DuBois in a CBS television adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, opposite Alec Baldwin, Diane Lane, and John Goodman.

"[45] Lange began the new millennium with a London stage production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, playing the part of the morphine-addicted family matriarch Mary Tyrone, for which she became the first American actress to receive an Olivier Award nomination.

In 2003, Lange starred opposite Tom Wilkinson in HBO's Normal, a film about a man who reveals to his wife his decision to have a sex change, for which she received nominations for the Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Movie.

She followed this with performances in the Bob Dylan vehicle Masked and Anonymous (2003), Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003), Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers (2005) and Wim Wenders's Don't Come Knocking (2005), before starring in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie for which she received mixed reviews.

In 2009, Lange co-starred as Big Edie, opposite Drew Barrymore, in HBO's Grey Gardens, directed by Michael Sucsy and based on the 1975 documentary of the same name.

[48] The show was a huge success not only for the network and creators but also for Lange, who experienced a resurgence in her popularity, receiving rave reviews and several awards for her controversial role.

In addition, Lange replaced Glenn Close in a film adaptation of Émile Zola's Thérèse Raquin, directed by Charlie Stratton and titled In Secret, co-starring Elizabeth Olsen, Tom Felton, Oscar Isaac, and Matt Lucas for which she received rave reviews.

[63] Previously, Jacobs dressed and interviewed Lange for Love magazine's fifth-anniversary issue, and had her provide a spoken-word version of "Happy Days Are Here Again" as the soundtrack for his autumn/winter 2014 show.

[67] She followed her final season on American Horror Story with a role opposite Shirley MacLaine and Demi Moore in the road-trip comedy, Wild Oats, which wrapped production at the end of 2014.

The first season revolved around the infamous rivalry between Hollywood legends Bette Davis (Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Lange), which came to a head during the making of the classic film, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

[7] The story takes place in 1962 and centers on Phyllis (Lange), as she oversees her son (Parsons) and daughter's (Keenan-Bolger) relocation to a new apartment, prompting all three to face and reflect on their shared and individual lives and relationships with one another.

[84] Also in 2024, she starred in The Great Lillian Hall, a film directed by Michael Cristofer, written by Elisabeth Seldes Annacone, and co-starring Kathy Bates, Pierce Brosnon, and Lily Rabe.

The series showrunner Jon Rabin Baitz said that casting her was a direct homage to her role as the Angel of Death in the Bob Fosse film All That Jazz (1979).

[91] Lange will star in director Jonathan Kent's film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, edited for the screen by David Lindsay-Abaire and co-starring Ed Harris, Ben Foster, and Colin Morgan.

[92][93][94][95][96][97] In an interview published on November 2, 2022, Lange spoke of her "bouts with depression" and "overwhelming sense of loneliness" and referred to the aforementioned project, noting, "I could be feeling that even more acutely right now because I'm starting to play [drug-addicted matriarch] Mary Tyrone again.

[107][108][109] Nicholas Bell of Ioncinema writes that her Oscar-winning role of Carly in Blue Sky is reminiscent of her signature performances, as "Lange excels [here] at the small tics hinting at the madness always lurking below the surface".

"[124] Lange is a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), specializing in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in spreading awareness of the disease in Russia.