Oscar-nominated ‘Wild at Heart’ actress Diane Ladd, Laura Dern’s mother, dies at 89
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Diane Ladd, Oscar-nominated actress and Laura Dern’s mom, dies at 89
Diane Ladd, the prolific Oscar-nominated actress and mother of Laura Dern, has died. She was 89. Ladd earned the first of her three Oscar nominations for Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” She also received supporting actress nods in the early 1990s for David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” and Martha Coolidge’s “Rambling Rose” Ladd married actor Bruce Dern in 1960 and divorced nine years later. They had two daughters, Laura and Diane, and the latter died at just 18 months old after a tragic pool accident. The mother-daughter duo continued to work together in the 2000s, appearing in “Inland Empire” and HBO dramedy “Enlightened” and “Baby, Baby, Talk Life” in a joint joint interview with Dern. In 2018, Ladd was diagnosed with lung disease and told she had only six months to live, although the doctor advised that taking walks could help increase her lung capacity.
Dern shared news of her mom’s death on Nov. 3 in a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter.
“My amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother, Diane Ladd, passed with me beside her this morning” at her home in Ojai, California, the statement read. “She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created.”
Dern added, “We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now.”
USA TODAY has reached out to representatives for Ladd and Dern.
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Ladd earned the first of her three Oscar nominations for Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” playing a matter-of-fact diner waitress named Flo who befriends Ellen Burstyn’s widowed heroine. She also received supporting actress nods in the early 1990s for David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” and Martha Coolidge’s “Rambling Rose,” both of which co-starred Dern.
“I love working with Laura,” Ladd told New Orleans magazine in 2014. “Once when we were doing ‘Wild at Heart,’ she said, ‘How was your day, Mom?’ And I said, ‘It was great. I worked with someone that everyone loved and respected and was incredible.’ She said, ‘Who is that?’ ” and I said, ‘It’s you, Laura. I’m proud of you as a professional – not just a talent, but the way you conduct yourself with humility as a human being.’ ”
Born in Laurel, Mississippi, Ladd got her start acting in the late 1950s on TV crime series such as “Decoy” and “Naked City.” She worked steadily for the next decade, before finding big-screen success as prostitute Ida Sessions in Roman Polanski’s classic film noir “Chinatown” in 1974, and as Chevy Chase’s exceedingly proud mom in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” in 1989.
When she first got the audition for the holiday comedy, “I said, I’m only about six years older than Chevy,’ ” Ladd recalled during a cast reunion in 2019. But after aging herself up with hair and makeup, “I walked in and Chevy was over there, and I said, ‘Sonny boy! I love you, sonny boy!’ And I got the job.”
Ladd married actor Bruce Dern in 1960 and divorced nine years later. They had two daughters, Laura and Diane, and the latter died at just 18 months old after a tragic pool accident. Ladd married twice more to businessmen William Shea Jr. and Robert Hunter. Hunter, her husband of 26 years, died in July at 77.
Ladd opened up about her marriage to Dern in a 2023 interview with USA TODAY, saying, “He’s not such a great husband, but he’s a really great actor. … (Laura) is half of me and half of him.” The mother-daughter duo continued to work together in the 2000s, appearing in David Lynch’s surreal “Inland Empire” and HBO dramedy “Enlightened.”
Throughout her six-decade career, Ladd was nominated for three Emmys and four Golden Globes, winning one for the sitcom “Alice,” a spinoff series of “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” (She played Flo in the original film and a different waitress named Belle in the CBS show.) More recently, she appeared on TV in episodes of “Ray Donovan” and “Young Sheldon.”
In 2018, Ladd was diagnosed with lung disease and told she had only six months to live, although the doctor advised that taking walks could help increase her lung capacity. And so she began taking daily walks with Dern, which her daughter recorded and later compiled into a book titled “Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding).”
“We started taking these walks to strengthen my lungs,” Ladd said in a joint New York Times interview with Dern in 2023. “You got me to walk and talk, and that’s when we went beyond intuition and voiced everything. If one person reads our book and does the same − really talks to someone they love − writing it won’t have been in vain. Aside from that, all I can offer is a reflection of life itself. Art is just a mirror, and that’s why we go see movies: to learn who we are.”
Contributing: Edward Segarra