‘Wild at Heart’ actress, Laura Dern’s mother was 89

Diane Ladd, a three-time Oscar-nominated actress for her roles in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Wild at Heart” and “Rambling Rose,” died Monday morning at her home in Ojai, California, a representative for her daughter, Laura Dern, confirmed. Variety. Ladd was 89.

Laura Dern said in a statement: “My amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother, Diane Ladd, passed away with me next to her this morning at her home in Ojai, California. She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could seemingly create. We were blessed to have her. She now flies with her angels.”

The prolific Ladd drew vivid character portraits throughout her career, and while having family in the business is not notable, Ladd was unusual for the number of times she and her daughter performed together.

Ladd earned Oscar nominations for Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” in which she memorably portrayed the earthy, colorful waitress Flo; David Lynch’s 1990 feature “Wild at Heart,” in which Ladd played the enormously evil mother of Laura Dern’s character, with a touch of the Wicked Witch of the West; and Martha Coolidge’s “Rambling Rose,” set in 1935 Georgia, in which Ladd played not the mother of Dern’s character but the defender of Dern’s sexually adventurous Rose, and for which both Ladd and Dern received Oscar nominations.

The nominations for Ladd and Dern in “Rambling Rose” represent the only example of a mother and daughter being nominated for the same film. In “Rambling Rose,” Peter Travers said in Rolling Stone that Ladd “brings a welcome feminist bite to her role,” while Travers wrote in “Wild at Heart” that Ladd “squeezes her juicy role with scene-stealing pizzazz.”

In a review of “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” for New York Magazine, Judith Crist wrote of Diane Ladd’s “remarkable performance as a foul-mouthed waitress colleague with a heart of gold.”

Ladd and Dern were recently seen together in HBO’s 2011-2013 series “Enlightened,” in which Dern starred as Amy, a self-destructive executive trying to get her life back on track after imploding. Ladd played her mother, Helen, with whom she has a difficult relationship. Ladd got her chance to star on the series in the episode “Consider Helen,” in which she was the focus.

More recently, Ladd starred in David O. Russell’s 2015 film “Joy,” starring Jennifer Lawrence, the beloved grandmother of Lawrence’s title character, providing gentle storybook storytelling.

Ladd had a small but key role in the classic 1974 neo-noir “Chinatown” as Ida Sessions, a sex worker with a SAG card who poses as Evelyn Mulwray to lure Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes into the case of Hollis Mulwray and the nefarious goings-on at the Los Angeles Dept. or Water and Power.

Ladd played the wife of Gene Hackman’s character in the 1981 Hackman-Barbra Streisand vehicle “All Night Long”; Ladd played the mother of Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989) and of Jack Stanton (John Travolta), the lightly fictionalized version of Bill Clinton, in “Primary Colors” (1998).

Other big screen credits include “Something Wicked This Way Comes”; “Black Widow” by Bob Rafelson; “Plain Clothes” by Martha Coolidge; 1992’s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me,” a comedy in which she played a flirtatious but aging Southern Belle alongside Mary Lanier, her own mother; “The Cemetery Club” (in which Ladd played a Jewish widow alongside Ellen Burstyn and Olympia Dukakis); “Spirits of Mississippi”; Sandra Bullock’s drug rehab drama “28 Days”; and Anthony Hopkins vehicle “The World’s Fastest Indian.”

Ladd and her first husband, actor Bruce Dern, welcomed their daughter, Laura Dern, on February 10, 1967. The couple divorced in 1969.

As a child, Laura Dern, uncredited, appeared in a number of Ladd’s films. Later, when they both starred in “Wild at Heart” and “Rambling Rose,” they appeared together in Alexander Payne’s abortion comedy “Citizen Ruth,” in which it was Dern’s turn to headline and Ladd an uncredited cameo. Both had substantial roles (though Dern played the lead) in the 1996 CBS televised “The Siege at Ruby Ridge,” and they reprized the roles of mother and daughter in Billy Bob Thornton’s 2001 rural comedy “Daddy and Them.” Dern played the lead role and Ladd had a supporting role in Showtime’s healthcare film “Damaged Care” (2002). The pair returned to the world of David Lynch for the exceptionally bizarre “Inland Empire,” which starred Dern as an actress who fades into her role and Ladd made a cameo as what J. Hoberman described as a “nasty TV gossip.”

Ladd tried his hand at directing in 1995 with Showtime’s ‘Mrs. Munck’, for which she adapted a novel by Ella Leffland. She starred opposite ex-husband Bruce Dern in the film.

Ladd also worked extensively in television and was nominated for three Emmy Awards: in 1993 for a guest appearance on “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman”; in 1994 for guest actress in a comedy series for “Grace Under Fire”; and in 1997 as a guest actress in a drama series for ‘Touched by an Angel’.

After playing Flo in Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” Ladd also appeared in the CBS sitcom based on the movie “Alice,” but in a different role: waitress Belle Dupree, who appeared on the show for one season in 1980-1981, after the TV series Flo, played by Polly Holliday, was spun off into its own show.

She was previously a member of the cast of the soap opera ‘The Secret Storm’. Ladd also starred in the 2004 horror miniseries “Stephen King Presents Kingdom Hospital,” guest-starred on series such as “LA Law,” “ER” and “Cold Case” and appeared in a long list of TV movies.

Rose Diane Ladnier was born in Meridian, Miss., but moved to New York City as a teenager. Ladd worked as a model and dancer at the Copacabana nightclub before making her stage debut in Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending.”

In 1961, Ladd made her debut in her first feature film, ‘Something Wild’. The actress made her debut on television in the very early days of the format, appearing in the TV series ‘The Big Story’, in a 1949 episode called ‘The Small of Death’.

Her first feature film roles were uncredited, including in “Murder, Inc.” and ’40 pound trouble’. She appeared with Bruce Dern in Roger Corman’s 1966 motorcycle film “Wild Angels,” the film that inspired Peter Fonda to make “Easy Rider.” She also appeared in Mark Rydell’s “The Reivers”; the Paul Newman-directed “WUSA”; and, just before “Chinatown,” the Burt Reynolds vehicle “White Lightning.”

Ladd’s book of short stories “A Bad Afternoon for a Piece of Cake” was published in 2013.

She was married three times, the first time to Bruce Dern from 1960 to 1969, the second time to William A. Shea Jr. from 1969 to 1977. She married her third husband, Robert Charles Hunter, in 1999. Hunter died in July at the age of 77.

Ladd is survived by her daughter Laura Dern and two grandchildren.