Three-time Oscar-nominated actress Diane Ladd dies at 89
She was also the mother of actress Laura Dern, with whom she had filmed extensively, from Sailor and Lula to Enlightened.
American actress Diane Ladd, three times nominated for an Oscar, died Monday morning at her home in Ojai, California.
Famous for his roles in Alice is no longer here (1974), Sailor and Lula (1990) and Rambling Rose (1991), she was 89 years old.
She was also the mother of Hollywood star Jurassic Park, Laura Dern. In a moving message, she paid tribute to him:
“My incredible hero and my most precious gift, my mother Diane Ladd, passed away this morning at my side at her home in Ojai. She was the most beautiful soul: daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit anyone could ask for. We were lucky to have her. She now flies with the angels.”
Her ex-husband, actor Bruce Dern, and father of Laura, praised “an immense actress, a hidden treasure until her meeting with David Lynch”. “When he cast her as Laura’s mother in Sailor and Lulathe world finally understood his genius. She was funny, brilliant, full of grace, and above all a wonderful mother to our daughter. For that, I will be eternally grateful to him.”
Revealed in Alice is no longer here (1974) by Martin Scorsese, where she played the colorful waitress Flo, Diane Ladd then made her mark in Sailor and Lula (1990) by David Lynch, where she played a monstrous and hallucinated mother, before landing a third nomination for Rambling Rose (1991) by Martha Coolidge. In the latter film, she played not the mother, but the protector of her own daughter’s character. This movie remains a unique work in the history of cinema: it is the only film to have earned an Oscar nomination for a mother and her daughter for two different roles in the same feature film.
His film career extended far beyond that. We also saw it in The Fair of Darkness (Something Wicked This Way Comes1983), The Black Widow (Black Widow1987) by Bob Rafelson, in Plain Clothes (1987) by Martha Coolidge, the crazy comedy Caravan city (1992), where she played an aging Southern seductress alongside Mary Lanier, her own mother…
In the 2010s, Diane Ladd and Laura Dern reunited on screen one last time in the series Enlightened (2011-2013) on HBO, where they once again played a mother and daughter, in a relationship that was as tender as it was awkward.
