Nearly two decades on Ms Lange collected her second Oscar last week -- as Best Actress for 'Blue Sky' in which she co-starred with Tomy Lee Jones -- and she may be a contender again next year for 'Losing Isaiah.' Like Lange, it is a formidable piece of work. The film directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal (Gyllenhaal) is the 'Kramer Versus Kramer' of today. It deals with the complex situation of inter-racial adoption. Lange is a social worker who adopts a black child. Then, the boy's natural mother, a former crack cocaine addict, wants the child back. Halle Berry who stole the frothy' The Flintstones' last year plays the real mother. You can understand the drama and emotions involved. And the politically correct lobby stalking the corridors of the movie. 'Black babies belong with black mothers,' says the lawyer representing Halle Berry . But, for drama as often now in real life, the adoptive parents fight back. They point out that they are teaching the boy about multi-racial culture, about the ethnic melting pot we all live in. There's a wonderful line when they explain that the boy watches ' Sesame Street '. To them it represents all that is good in education and entertainment. The opposition lawyer quizzes:' So who is this child to identify with? The yellow Muppet?' In America this is called 'transracial adoption' and there have been studies showing how the children as they become teenagers feel 'lost'. They are black with white 'parents' and the ethnic hook is missing. Nevertheless, this teenaged thing -- and the identity thing happens to almost all teenagers -- goes. The majority, say the surveys, benefit from growing in a family environment rather than in a crack house in some inner-city slum. 'It is a film with a strong theme and a message,' says Lange who was 'compelled' to make the movie. She believes it is an issue which has side-stepped most of us, a subject which has been withering in the dark. No longer. She and Halle Berry deliver career performances. Which is what Lange has been doing since she got out of the clutches of 'King Kong'. She likes blueberry pancakes rather than caviar. She's also happier in the backwoods than the Polo Lounge. After starring as Kong's handmaiden -- Italian film tycoon Dino De Laurentiis called it 'King Klong' and had similar difficulties with his star's name -- she became a trivia joke on the Hollywood glitz circuit. Her later pursuits proved them all wrong. She has a gypsy bone. She lives in the Virginia countryside with Pulitzer-prizewinning writer/actor Sam Sheppard ( typically he avoided last week's Oscar ceremonies at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles ) with their son and daughter and her daughter by ballet maestro Mikhail Baryshnikov, cats, dogs and any bird theat flies by and wants a meal. Before they were in Santa Fe , New Mexico , and before that in her home countryside of Minnesota where she retains her custom-built log cabin ( no 'phone, no television) where she chops wood and watches the trout bite. There are good fishing streams and the bites are as many as the offers she gets every day from Hollywood . Many must choke on that. This was the model/bimbo who got a little lucky so long ago. Now, like Fonda and Streisand, she's the dealmaker. And they are her deals she makes. But Lange is not some snappy tyrant. She just doesn't' play by Rodeo Drive rules. That, she finds, diverts the uninteresting traffic. Movies like 'Losing Isaiah' are a choice made through many years of playing the Hollywood game. ' In a sense I think I was lucky because some people take off -- they're flying -- and then something hits them in midcareer. Suddenly, the bottom falls out. I got over all this disappointment and rejection and self-doubt and all of those things that were imposed on me for tose first couple of years. It was great for now I know none of that will ever affect me again -- or as strongly as it did.'
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