Time just flies by for some

Jessica LANGE just completed shooting on “Grey Gardens,” the forthcoming fictional film version of the film documentary about the mother-daughter duo who went from being American aristocracy to crazy cat ladies living in a falling-down Hamptons house. It was also recently made into a musical. (Got that?) She costars with Drew Barrymore; her longtime partner is Sam Shepard, and she lives in New York.

When do you get anonymity?

Well, most of the time. . . . When you haven’t been in the press for a while, you don’t have a film out there -- yeah, I can go down the street forever and ever and they don’t know who I am. Which is great! But you know, New York is cool that way, they’ll say “hi” like they know you, or “Hey, haven’t seen you in a while; what are you doing?” I love that about New York.

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You finished shooting on “Grey Gardens.” I’m completely freaked out! How’s it gonna be?

I don’t know how it’s going to be! It was the greatest experience I’ve had in so long, I can’t even tell you. It was thrilling work. One, because the age range of the character -- Drew had the same range, I play Big Edie, she plays Little Edie -- but we cover a 40-year period in their lives. I go from 39 to 79. The story starts with the impression of the documentary of them in their later years. Them living in this crazy squalor, and this wildly eccentric relationship.

But then we go back 40 years. So you also see them in their heyday, at the height of New York society. And it tracks them not continually, but it jumps like a decade, then another decade. So you see this progression of them going from A to Z.

What I did is, I had this marvelous reference, the Maysles brothers documentary, what she was like then. And then I got to imagine that woman 10 years earlier, 20 years earlier, 30 years earlier. A wonderful exercise as an actor. And I had to sing and dance. And wearing four hours’ worth of prosthetic makeup, and acting like I’m 79 years old -- and finding her voice and her crazy mannerisms. It was a big, big part. A big job.

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How many times did you watch the documentary?

I can’t even tell you. I was so familiar with it before the project even came my way. Once I knew that I was going to play the part I watched it many times. When I was shooting I would watch bits and pieces of it every day. It was my morning exercise. Just to hear her voice. Or to see her, then it would center me in the character, even if I was playing her as a young woman. Yeah, I make corn in the movie.

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Had you ever met Drew Barrymore before?

No. Not until we determined to do this together. She’s great in it.

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She better be.

She is! She’s fearless, and she is great.

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How near are Frances Farmer and Edie Bouvier Beale? [Lange played Frances Farmer in 1982’s “Frances.”]

I would say they were both survivors. That would seem like an odd quality to choose, because Frances didn’t survive all that well. But the powers that be overwhelmed her. But she had tremendous spirit, and I think the same is true with Edie Beale. For Frances to live through what she did and have a life past all of that? And she did. I think that speaks well of her. . . .

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What was that set like? ‘Frances’ was directed by an editor [Graeme Clifford].

Yeah, he had edited [“The Postman Always Rings Twice”]. And that’s how we came to work together on “Frances.” Who knows your work better than the editor? And he came to me and asked if I wanted to be Frances.

And off you went! It sounds so easy.

Obviously it wasn’t an easy shoot.

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How dark did that get?

Well, I got dark. . . . I had fallen into a deep well, trying to get to the bottom of this character. But that’s just, you know. Some characters stay with you more than others. Some characters are really haunting, some you shed quickly. Frances is a haunting character.

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Did you do yourself any permanent damage?

Well, I don’t know, it could have! I can’t honestly speak to that. I don’t know if it has, maybe it has.

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When did you pick up a camera?

I had been interested in photography a long, long time ago. And I got sidetracked with many other things. Life, traveling, youth. And then falling into acting. So I only picked up a camera about 15 years ago for the first time again. And Sam had gotten me this great little Leica, and my kids were growing, and I thought, “This is great, I’ll just start taking pictures of them.” And I starting shooting black and white and built myself a darkroom. And it just kept expanding, and now I’m going to have a book published. Which is such a dream come true for me!

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You’re so fancy.

No, I’m thrilled. So it’ll be a book that’ll come out in October. Of all my -- not all -- but my black and white photographs.

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And you get to spend quiet evenings in the darkroom.

I loved it. It was quiet. I was in there all by myself, listening to Sam Cooke, printing pictures. The most exciting thing was that moment you exposed it: the paper, the developer and you’re leaning over the tray and watching this image come up. It used to give me goose bumps sometimes when it was really good. You thought . . . I did that, I can really do something.