Laura Dern Reflects on the Powerful Influence of Her Mother and Father
Laura Dern is moving forward with work while holding tightly to the influence of the two people she says shaped every part of her life — her mother, Diane Ladd, and her father, Bruce Dern. According to PEOPLE , a month…
Laura Dern is moving forward with work while holding tightly to the Influence of the two people she says shaped every part of her life — her mother, Diane Ladd, and her father, Bruce Dern.
According to PEOPLE, a month after Ladd’s death on Nov. 3 at age 89, the 58-year-old actress spoke with the Los Angeles Times about promoting her new films, Is This Thing On? and Jay Kelly, while grieving a parent she was extraordinarily close to.
As she prepared for interviews, Dern said she quickly realized she couldn’t — and wouldn’t — separate her career from the family that built her foundation.
“I thought, ‘This is going to be hard because I’m going to have to talk about my parents,’ ” she admitted. “Then I thought, ‘They are my muses, my guides, my teachers. I’ve never done an interview without talking about my parents, and that will be the case for the rest of my life.’ ”
The actress publicly announced Ladd’s death on the day she passed, calling her “my amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother” and praising her as “the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created.”
Ladd’s death certificate later confirmed her cause of death as acute on chronic hypoxic respiratory failure, and it noted she was cremated on Nov. 10.