Photographs by Eli Reed
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An In-Depth Look at Jessica Lange
By Jan Goodwin, March-April 2004
The actress and activist is one of our 2004 Impact Award winners
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Our 12-seater plane is about to land when the pilot announces a
delay—military aircraft on the runway. Even from an altitude of 1,000
feet, we can clearly see the tanks and armored personnel carriers below.
Jessica Lange nervously fingers wooden prayer beads. Small planes spook her
at the best of times. These are not the best of times. And this is not a movie
set.
Lange is about to touch down in Bunia in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC), a country that has been at war with itself for the past seven
years. As many as 3.3 million people reportedly have died, the highest number
of fatalities in any conflict since World War II.
Few pampered Hollywood celebrities would even consider an assignment like
this one. But the two-time Academy Award winner (Tootsie, 1982, and
Blue Sky, 1994) sought out the task—as UNICEF Goodwill
Ambassador—of first witnessing, then telling the world about the carnage
in central Africa.
Two months before this visit, hundreds of civilians were massacred in Bunia
by tribal militia members as ill-equipped U.N. troops remained in their
compound, watching helplessly. And only a few days ago, 22 women, elderly
people, and children were hacked to death in a village just outside the
town.
"Sam didn't want me to go," she says, peering through the
cabin window. Sam is actor, director, and playwright Sam Shepard, her partner
of 21 years and the father of their two teenage children, Hannah and Walker.
"I was afraid, too. But it's important. Middle America has no idea
what is happening in the Congo."
Lange knows Middle America. She was born there and she still lives there.
Spurning Hollywood and New York, she resides in tiny Stillwater, a town on the
Minnesota-Wisconsin border. She grew up some 125 miles away in Cloquet, a town
whose sole pre-Jessica-era claim to fame was the nation's only gas station
designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
"My activist leanings come from growing up in Minnesota, a liberal
state," she tells me. "My parents always impressed on us that it was
important to help the needy. I watched my grandmother raising other
people's kids. And the Vietnam War helped politicize me. I took part in all
the antiwar demonstrations."
While studying art at the University of Minnesota, Lange briefly joined the
Students for a Democratic Society, the group that popularized the slogan
"Make love, not war!" Dropping out of school, she traveled around
Europe with Spanish avant-garde photographer Paco Grande—her former
photography professor at the university. They married in 1970 and lived in
Paris for four years. Resettling in New York in 1974, Lange worked as a
waitress, then as a model, and then, against all odds, won the lead role in
producer Dino De Laurentis's 1976 remake of King Kong.
Stardom followed, but Jessica never lost her activist streak. She produced
and starred in the 1984 movie Country, which revealed the plight of
American farm families facing government foreclosures. She even testified
before Congress on the issue. In the early 1990s, she flew to Romania to expose
the cruel warehousing of orphaned children.
So, she says, when UNICEF came knocking early last year, "I said yes
immediately."
Lange made sure she was properly briefed for this trip by reading what she
could and talking to U.N. experts. She also called actress Susan Sarandon to
learn about her experience as a special UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
"Jessica has a lot of courage and compassion," Sarandon told me.
"It's not everyone who can deal with the physical and emotional toll
these trips take. The most difficult part is having to leave behind kids in bad
situations that can't be eliminated or eased considerably while you're
there."
Finally, we are on the ground. Walking past the troops, our party climbs
into a couple of jeeps. An armored personnel carrier pulls in front, another
behind us, as we drive off. "I can't help wondering," she asks,
"could they really help us if we needed them to?"
Soon we arrive at a vast makeshift refugee camp—temporary home to more
than 14,000 people. Row after row of plastic-sheeting shelters stretch as far
as we can see. Lange is mobbed by tiny children, who follow her pied
piper-like, holding her hand, pulling at her clothes for attention. She squats
down to communicate with them, swings a few up into her arms, and is amused as
they pull at her blond hair.
In one of those shelters, Lange sits across from a rail-thin 12-year-old boy
named Silvestre. His childhood came to an end at age nine, when he was forced
to become a child soldier, compelled to kill or be killed.
Stunted from three years of near-starvation rations, his head shaved bald to
get rid of lice, Silvestre doesn't look a day over eight. "Soldiers
gave us pills," he says softly. "They said the pills were magic and
they'd protect us against bullets. It didn't work. They put boys like
me in the front line. Many of my friends died. Bullets went in their front and
came out their backs. I killed many people, too. Now I don't like to sleep.
I have bad dreams."
I glance at Lange as this nightmarish story pours, matter-of-factly, from
the boy's lips. She is nodding, smiling reassuringly, holding the boy's
hand. Not until we rise and return to the blazing sunlight does she visibly
shudder.
"I'm just a mother," she says. "My reference point for
12-year-olds is kids preparing for junior high. Or playing soccer. Or music
lessons. Not this. Not children forced to kill."
In a world of khaki and camouflage, Lange stands out. Her black-and-white
floral skirt, black T-shirt, long bare legs, bright red polished toenails, and
Prada bag suggest she is lunching with a girlfriend, not visiting a war zone.
The Celtic symbol tattooed on her left wrist is a youthful memento of her
hippie days in Paris three decades ago. Now, at 54, her slim form and elegant
Nordic style belie the fact that she has recently become a grandmother. Her
daughter Shura, 23 (whose father is ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov), gave
birth to her first child last year.
For days, Lange shuttles from one hospital camp to another, witnessing the
aftermath of the war's atrocities. "I need coffee and a
cigarette," she says one morning (she allows herself two smokes a day),
after visiting a hospital that treats the war wounded. "Last night, I woke
up after a couple of hours and couldn't get back to sleep. So many awful
experiences these people have been through. It's difficult to believe that
we are all living on the same planet."
In a small, dimly lit ward at the Panzi Hospital—near the Rwandan
border—Lange meets 18-year-old Cecile. The girl limps on crutches, a
large surgical pin from her knee to her ankle. "What happened?" Lange
gently asks. The skinny teenager responds in a voice so low it's hard to
catch her words. "Soldiers forced their way into our house and beat
everyone in my family. They tied my arms, and with other girls I was taken to
the bush. They kept me for two months as a wife. Then the Mai-Mai [a rebel
group] attacked us. In the fighting, I was shot several times in the leg. I
couldn't walk, and the Mai-Mai captured me. After a week, they threw me in
the bush and ran away."
The following day, the teen was found lying helpless in the jungle by a
local farmer, who carried her to his home. A passing U.N. patrol refused to
take her to the city for medical aid. "They said it was too dangerous for
them," Cecile says.
But after several weeks, with the help of individuals who took pity on her,
she arrived here. "Doctors took three bullets out of my leg. They said my
bones are shattered, and they don't know if they will mend."
Throughout her heartbreaking story, Cecile fidgets with her fingers. Lange,
unconsciously emulating her, balls a handkerchief in her hands.
"Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" she asks the
young girl.
"I'm hungry," Cecile says.
Lange falls into stunned silence. In many underfunded African medical
facilities, patients must rely on their families to bring them meals. Cecile
has been relying on the charity of other patients for food.
"Oh," says Lange, blinking rapidly. "I'll get it. What
would you like?"
"Anything," Cecile smiles shyly.
Before leaving the hospital, Lange quietly pays for the teenager to receive
food and clothing. She also buys sewing machines for the girl and other young
rape victims at the hospital, so they can earn some income.
As we fly from one war-devastated town to another in the
Congo—distances are too vast to drive here, and rebels control most of
the roads—Lange immerses herself in a Buddhist text, highlighting
passages as she reads. She became interested in Eastern religions, particularly
Buddhism, in her 20s. "I didn't pursue it then, but about five years
ago, I began seeking out a teacher, and I found one at the Gyuto Tibetan
Monastery in Minneapolis," she says.
It is, perhaps, the Buddhist focus on compassion that has guided her
continued relationship with her former husband. Following their divorce, Paco
Grande progressively lost his sight to retinitis pigmentosa—a
particularly harsh fate for a photographer. "I don't want to discuss
it," she says. "Paco has his dignity. We had seven years together
during that pure time of youth. He is a great and dear friend of mine, and I
love him with all my heart."
It was Paco who encouraged her interest in photography. And when Sam gave
her a small Leica camera 10 years ago, "I immediately started shooting
documentary photographs and people."
Still, as we visit a nutrition center for kids in the DRC, Lange stops a
local news photographer from trying to get a particularly powerful shot. In a
cramped room, a severely malnourished infant is being weighed by a nurse in a
hammock-type scale. Shooting through a window from outside, the photographer
misses the shot—and asks for the wailing baby to be placed back in the
scale. "I don't think so," Lange says firmly. No one contradicts
her.
"The child didn't need to be put through more pain," she
explains to me later. "I can understand why a photographer wanted the
shot, but we need to balance the humanity of the moment."
In a hospital in the town of Goma, Lange meets 70-year-old Maria, a tiny,
wizened woman with a devastating story. Her five sons and their families were
burned to death in their homes. Her husband was killed as he tried to escape.
Her three daughters were murdered in front of her. "When I leave the
hospital," Maria says, "they will give me a hoe, some seed, and food
for one month. But I have no place to live, no land to plant. Nowhere to
go."
"I'm amazed at the spirit of these people," Lange says.
"It's overwhelming to witness the tremendous humanity of the people
here, in the face of such unspeakable pain." She doesn't understand
why the international community seems to be ignoring this bloody African war,
which also happens to be one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
"Why should America care?" she asks. "Because it's a
humanity issue. When people suffer and others can alleviate that pain, it's
our responsibility to try."
As Lange prepares to leave the region, she packs a small piece of solidified
lava in her luggage that was given to her by a young doctor, so that she
won't forget his country. "I'll keep it with my piece of the
Berlin Wall," she tells him.
She looks tired climbing into the U.N. plane one last time. The fine lines
on her face are more visible than normal. "I hope I have the European
approach toward age," she muses. "As a woman ages, every line and
wrinkle on her face and body should tell a story. It's why I've never
considered cosmetic surgery. The idea that beauty can only be synonymous with
youth is an obsession that has been forced on American women."
At last, we are flying home. For Lange, that means a Victorian house on
several acres in Minnesota. "It's large, but we always seem to end up
in the kitchen," she says.
The enormous fireplace has seen as many as seven dogs curled up in front of
it. "But now we're down to one, our big yellow Lab. We have canaries
and finches, too." Her favorite place to unwind, however, is the family
cabin in a remote part of Minnesota near Duluth. "There is no place
I'd rather be," she says, her face visibly relaxing. "The cabin
is in the deep woods, on a hill overlooking a small lake. There is no sound
except nature, which can be amazingly loud when you really listen. We can hear
coyote, timber wolves, bear. I get up at 6:30 a.m., take my coffee, and sit on
the dock and watch the hawks, eagles, loons, and blue heron."
Of her relationship with Shepard, she says, "He and I don't agree
on everything, but we have a real affinity, and a shared history. He
doesn't involve himself in politics as I do, although he follows them.
He's a very honorable man, with great reserve and strength. One of the
things I love about Sam is he's a man I can learn from. I couldn't be
with somebody who wasn't that way."
Although the couple have been together for more than two decades—they
met while filming Frances in 1982—they have yet to marry. "We talk
about it from time to time," she says. "But we've never felt the
necessity. Paco was my only official marriage. Sam and I have a marriage of the
spirit."
Despite the security of home, Lange says she will return to the Congo within
a year. "I want to see the women and girls, the young boy soldiers I met,
to know how they're doing," she says.
She also plans to raise relief funds in the coming year and address the U.N.
Security Council on the issue of children in armed combat.
"Yes, violence exists in other places. But in the DRC there is an
absolute crisis," she says. "How can these issues not be relevant to
our lives? We have to think of ourselves as citizens of the world first, and
then citizens of a smaller place second."
To help victims of violence in the DRC, call 1-800-4UNICEF or visit UNICEF's
website.
Jan Goodwin is author of Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil
of Silence on the Islamic World (Plume Publishing, 2003).
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