‘My Mom Taught Me to Lead With Empathy and Purpose’: Remembering Actress Diane Ladd Through Her Sweet Bond With Daughter Laura Dern
The actress, who just passed away at age 89, shared the screen with her daughter many times
Laura Dern has been a gifted actress since her teenage years, and given the fact that she’s so accomplished in her own right, it’s easy to forget that she came from a family of actors. The star’s parents, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, rose to prominence in the ’70s and were both nominated for multiple Academy Awards. Dern and Ladd divorced when Laura was just 2 years old, and the future actress was primarily raised by her mom.
Sadly, Ladd, who maintained a close relationship with her famous daughter and frequently shared the screen with her, just passed away on November 3 at age 89. In a moving statement shared with Entertainment Weekly, Laura Dern said, “My amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother passed with me beside her this morning at her home in Ojai, Calif. She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created. We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now.”
We’re paying tribute to Ladd’s life and career by taking a look back at the singular bond she shared with her daughter.
Diane Ladd’s early advice to Laura Dern: ‘Don’t be an actress’
Like many children of actors, Laura Dern wanted to follow in her parents’ footsteps from a young age. Initially, Diane Ladd wasn’t too pleased about this, as she hoped to protect her daughter from the entertainment industry’s superficiality, recalling, “She was only, like, 11 years old, and I said, ‘Don’t be an actress. Be a doctor, be a lawyer.’ Nobody cares if you put on weight or your chin points when you cry if you’re a doctor. They just want you to be the best you can be. But an actress? They care, care, care, care, care.”
As a single mom, Ladd frequently brought her young daughter to work with her, and Dern couldn’t be swayed from her acting dream, responding, “No. It is all I knew . . . For me, a set felt like a second home.” She made her debut as an extra in her mom’s 1973 film White Lightning. The next year, she had a bit part in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and the 1974 Martin Scorsese film earned Ladd the first of her three Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations for her role as a sassy waitress.
When Dern had her first credited role opposite Jodie Foster in the 1980 coming-of-age movie Foxes, Ladd accepted that her teen daughter was destined for stardom, telling her in The New York Times, “I knew you had the gift when I went to a screening of Foxes. You didn’t have much to do, but my heart just gasped, like when someone opens a little box and there’s this gorgeous diamond inside.” As the decade progressed, Dern became a star thanks to her roles in movies like Mask (1985), Smooth Talk (1985) and Blue Velvet (1986), and the rest is Hollywood history.
Diane Ladd and Laura Dern’s unforgettable mother-daughter performances
In the ’90s and beyond, Ladd and Dern memorably performed together in movies and shows. Ladd played Dern’s unhinged mother in the 1990 David Lynch film Wild at Heart, and she earned her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her work. In 1991, Ladd and Dern costarred in the Great Depression-set drama Rambling Rose, in which Dern played the title character and Ladd played a housewife who becomes her maternal figure. Ladd and Dern both received Oscar nominations for their work in the film, marking the first time in the Academy’s history that a real-life mother and daughter had been nominated for the same film.
Following their impressive mother-daughter achievement in Rambling Rose, Ladd played Dern’s mom in the 1996 CBS TV movie The Siege at Ruby Ridge. That year, Ladd also had an uncredited cameo as Dern’s mom in the edgy comedy Citizen Ruth. Ladd then played Dern’s mom in the 2001 film Daddy & Them.
In 2002, Ladd played a nun in Dern’s Showtime TV movie Damaged Care, and in 2006, the duo once again worked with David Lynch in his experimental film Inland Empire, which starred Dern as an actress losing touch with reality and featured Ladd as a gossipy talk show host.
Ladd had what would be her final role with her daughter in the HBO series Enlightened, which aired from 2011 to 2013. The comedy, which was created by The White Lotus’ Mike White, earned critical acclaim but was canceled after just two seasons. In the show, Dern played a woman who moves back in with her mom (played by—you guessed it!—Ladd) following a period of personal and professional turmoil. Ladd and Dern’s real-life relationship gave depth to their onscreen mother-daughter portrayal, earning the show a devoted following who appreciated the simultaneously funny and emotionally fraught depiction of a challenging family dynamic.
The sweet things Diane Ladd and Laura Dern said about one another
Over the years, Diane Ladd and Laura Dern have shared many lovely words about one another. In 2023, they cowrote a bestselling book, Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding), which captured their conversations after Ladd was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Mother and daughter both said that writing the book and getting to dig into their relationship was a powerful experience.
In an interview with People, Dern said of her mom, “She has the most open, honest face. You know what she’s feeling. It’s an amazing thing to have as a gift because I always knew I was loved. Even when it was a ferocious face or an angry face, it was so full and told so many stories that I always felt the love coming from her.”
Dern also shared that she learned a lot about acting from Ladd, telling her in a New York Times interview, “The thing that inspires me most about your career is that it’s ever-surprising . . . On a scene level, too, I watched the boldness of your choices. Even if it doesn’t make it into the movie, a particular choice might inform another take that does. I can be concerned about whether something I said at a party came out the wrong way but, thanks to you, when I’m on a set, I don’t care because I know it’s a process to get to the truth of a thing.”
Dern looked up to her mom in many ways, and the admiration went both ways, with Ladd saying, “I’m proud of Laura because she’s an incredible talent and an incredible actress and, in my own opinion, she’s an incredible, gracious human being who cares a lot about mankind . . . She’s tireless in donating her time to help people.”
As Dern put it in a recent Variety podcast, “My mom taught me to lead with empathy and purpose. That’s what keeps me in love with storytelling.” Diane Ladd will be missed, but it’s clear that Laura Dern will continue to carry on her legacy of brilliant performances.
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