Roles are hard to come by for actresses who are Jessica Lange's age. Or as the 58-year-old actress put it, "When our youth and beauty fades, the script offers dry up as well.
"It's quite sad, really," she continued. "We definitely get better, more confident, as actresses as we age, and yet we aren't given nearly enough opportunities to prove that to anyone." But, Lange added sarcastically: "I'm not bitter about this at all, as you can probably tell." Still, all kidding aside, Lange has been as selective as she can be with movie projects, considering the circumstances. So when the script for "Bonneville" was passed along to her, she says it was something she "really couldn't say no to."
"It was such a breath of fresh air. Here was a story filled with strong female characters who are all my age or in the neighborhood," she said by telephone from New York City.
"Plus, it was a road movie, and those are always such fun to do," she said, laughing.
"Bonneville" opened in a handful of cities today, including Salt Lake City. The PG-rated comedy-drama stars Lange as Arvilla Holden, who is joined by her best friends, Margene (Kathy Bates) and Carol (Joan Allen), on a road trip to transport her late husband's ashes from Idaho to California.
It offered her an opportunity to work with Bates, with whom she worked on "Men Don't Leave" in 1990. And it also gave the two-time Oscar-winner screen time with Allen, an actress about whom, Lange says, she "had so much respect for her abilities and her depth as an actress."
"I've wanted to work with Joan for years, but we could never find the right project," Lange said, noting that the three actresses "got along famously. You'd think we'd really been friends all of our lives."
Also, all three characters are supposed to be members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which presented a new challenge for Lange and the others.
"I've known a few Mormons in my time, but I really wasn't that familiar with the religion or their beliefs," she said. "I just had to assume that our screenwriter (Daniel D. Davis) had done his homework."
Still, Lange and the other two actresses did spend time alongside LDS crew members during the film's Utah location shoots.
"I've been to Utah before, but this was the first time I've gotten to work there," she said. "And I have to say that I had a great time. Everyone was so wonderful to work with, so kind and so generous, and they all seemed to be as interested as we were in making a quality movie."
In addition to Salt Lake City, which served as the film headquarters, other "Bonneville" filming sequences took took them to Idaho, Nevada and the Bonneville Salt Flats.
"We had such fun, traveling and going to all these incredible places," Lange said. "It would have been like going on vacation if we hadn't had to do all that pesky acting."
Lange and the cast wrapped up work on "Bonneville" in 2006, but post-production has taken considerable time. ("They had to make sure they were completely happy with the film before releasing it in theaters," she said.)
And since then, she completed shooting a new television version of "Sybil" and is currently working on two films.
In the fact-based drama "Grey Gardens," she plays the eccentric aunt of Jackie Kennedy. (Jeanne Tripplehorn and Drew Barrymore co-star as the former first lady and her equally eccentric first cousin, respectively.)
And she's set to star in an adaptation of the Brenda Walker novel "One More River." "I've been very fortunate in terms of my recent work schedule," she said. "And I'm grateful. I'm going to working as long as these terrific offers keep coming my way."
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com