Biography
Playing characters ranging from wide-eyed virgins to willful sirens to drug-addicted losers, Laura Dern is among the screen's most interesting modern actresses. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and slender, Dern moves with a coltish combination of grace and gangliness that she uses to make herself alternately plain or beautiful, innocent or seductive, as her roles require. Her parents,
Bruce Dern and
Diane Ladd, are both successful actors but initially discouraged her from becoming involved in the profession. Still, acting was Dern's childhood goal, and after her parents divorced, she made her film debut at the age of six in
White Lightning (1973).
The following year, Dern played a bit part in
Martin Scorsese's
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. She got her first major role in 1980, playing a teenager in
Adrian Lyne's
Foxes. By 1983, she had appeared in more films, and in defiance of her parents' wishes, decided to get some formal dramatic training at the Lee Strasberg Institute, where she studied Method acting. She went on to appear in films such as
Teachers (1984) and
Mask (1985) and gained a reputation for realistic portrayals of goodhearted innocents. Dern could have easily been typecast into such roles had
Joyce Chopra not cast her as a rebellious teen anxious to experience a sexual awakening in
Smooth Talk (1986). The young actress' portrayal earned her a New Generation Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics. That same year, Dern became an even more marketable actress when she played a fresh-faced young sleuth in
David Lynch's disturbing, groundbreaking
Blue Velvet. She again worked with Lynch in the flamboyantly bizarre
Wild at Heart (1990), in which she played an oversexed 20-year-old on the run with her lover (Nicholas Cage). The film proved to be a family affair, as Ladd played her villainous mother. The two appeared together again the following year in the beautifully wrought
Rambling Rose. Dern's naturalistic performance as a troubled 19-year-old who wants love, but has confused it with sex, won her considerable acclaim that culminated in an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Ladd was also nominated, making it the first time a mother-daughter team had been so honored in the same year.
In 1993, Dern became a bigger star portraying a courageous paleo-botanist in
Steven Spielberg's blockbuster
Jurassic Park. Three years later, she played one of her most offbeat roles as a paint-huffing, spiteful, pregnant, and dumb as a box-of-doorknobs homeless girl who finds herself caught in the middle of a battle royale between pro- and anti-abortion groups in the black comedy
Citizen Ruth. In 1999, she took on two very diverse roles, first playing a supportive high school teacher in
October Sky and then returning to the realm of eccentricity -- and to sharing the screen with her mother -- as part of an unconventional Alabama family in
Billy Bob Thornton's Daddy and Them. Though audiences were no doubt eager to see what Slingblade director Thornton had up his sleeve for the eagerly anticipated feature, Daddy and Them did recieve stateside release into a full two-years after production wrapped - and when it finally did find it's way into theaters critical and popular response was lukewarm at best. The disappointment was more than counterbalanced that year however when Dern and boyfriend Ben Harper gave birth to their first baby boy Ellery, and in addition to also returning to the land of dinosaurs with
Jurassic Park III in 2001Dern essayed memorable supporting performances in a number of films including Novcaine,
Focus and
I Am Sam. Stepping back into the lead for her role as true life HMO whistle-blower Linda Peeno in the made-for-HBO film
Damaged Goods, many found Dern's performance so moving that whispers of an Emmy nomination began to circulate. That wasn't in the cards however, and the following year Dern returned to feature work with the adulterous drama
We Don't Live Here Anymore.
In addition to her film career, Dern has appeared on stage and television. In 1992, she won an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe award for performing in the HBO docudrama
Afterburn. In 1997, she again proved her versatility by offering a convincing, Emmy-nominated portrayal of a lesbian who is comfortable with her sexuality in a landmark episode of the sitcom
Ellen in which star
Ellen DeGeneres "comes out of the closet." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide