Jessica Lange says King Kong was 'not the fantasy'

Jessica Lange says King Kong was not what she imagined her first acting job would be. 

The two-time Oscar winner, 77, looked back on making her 1976 film debut when she appeared on Live with Kelly and Mark last month. 

“I never imagined that my first acting job would be in a film of that magnitude,” she said. “That was not the fantasy I had about starting in the business.”

At the time, Lange was working as a waitress and living in a fifth-floor walk-up in the West Village, after moving back to New York from Paris. 

A modeling agency told her that producer Dino De Laurentiis was looking for an unknown to play Dwan. 

She flew to Los Angeles for a screen test. She was initially turned down after one look at a cattle call. 

As she told Vanity Fair in 1991, the producers saw other women, “a lot of big, buxom blondes”, and “just from sight they weren’t interested”. Her agent pushed for a second look, and she was ultimately cast.

The film was a box office success, but not for her career. 

“The film came out and I was completely dismissed,” Lange said. “I didn’t get another offer for years. Nobody took me seriously as an actor.” 

Host Kelly Ripa observed that her character, who wants desperately to be a star, mirrored her experience.

Lange won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year for the film. 

Critic Pauline Kael wrote that Lange’s relationship with Kong was why the movie worked, praising her “fast, yet dreamy, comic style”. 

Lange won the Oscar for best supporting actress for Tootsie in 1983 and best actress for Blue Sky in 1995, and later found a second career on television in American Horror Story.