Jessica Lange is considering retirement. In a candid interview with The Telegraph, the two-time Oscar-winning actress revealed that she is thinking of “getting out of filmmaking” and offered some blunt criticism of the direction the entertainment industry has taken in recent years.
“Creativity is now secondary to corporate profits,” Lange said. “The focus is no longer on the art or the artist or the storytelling. It becomes about satisfying your shareholders. It diminishes the artist and the art of filmmaking.”
Lange, who has worked with acclaimed directors such as Bob Fosse, Sydney Pollack, Bob Rafelson and Martin Scorsese since her screen debut in the 1976 remake of “King Kong,” also shared that she has “no desire to see 90 percent” of contemporary releases. The actress cited “big comic book franchise films”, “frantic editing” and ageism as particularly distasteful elements of the modern business.
“They’ve sacrificed this art that we’re involved in… for the sake of profit,” Lange continued. “I don’t know if it’s because filmmakers think they can’t hold the audience’s attention anymore… That kind of filmmaking drives me crazy.”
Though Lange has been contemplating exciting entertainment – “I’m sure they won’t miss me at all,” she told The Telegraph – she has kept busy in recent years. She won two Primetime Emmy Awards for her roles on American Horror Story and was nominated for playing Joan Crawford in Feud. Upcoming, Lange will star in an adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and reunite with Kathy Bates in the drama Places, Please. This year she starred in Neil Jordan’s period noir “Marlowe”. She will return to Broadway in the spring to star in a production of Paula Vogel’s new play, “Mother Play”.
