Diane Ladd, Oscar-nominated actress and mother of Laura Dern, dies at 89

Diane Ladd, the actress known for her Oscar-nominated roles in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Wild at Heart” and “Rambling Rose,” has died, her representative confirmed to CBS News on Monday. She was 89.

Her daughter, Laura Dern, said in a statement that she was by Ladd’s side when she passed at her home in Ojai, California.  

“She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created,” Dern said. “We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now.”

Dern’s statement didn’t immediately cite a cause of death.

In 2023, the mother and daughter told “CBS Sunday Morning” that the two began taking daily walks in Santa Monica after learning that Ladd had developed a lung disease, believed to be caused by exposure to pesticides. Dern was told her mother only had six months to live. 

That’s when the two had conversations that eventually filled the pages of “Honey, Baby, Mine,” their joint memoir named for an old folk song Ladd’s father used to sing. They discussed everything, starting with Ladd’s marriage and divorce from Laura’s father, actor Bruce Dern, to her efforts to discourage Laura from joining the family business. 

“She was only, like, 11 years old, and I said, ‘Don’t be an actress. Be a doctor, be a lawyer,'” Ladd said. “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.”

But Dern said there was no stopping her from being in movies: “No. It is all I knew.”

A native of Laurel, Mississippi, Ladd was apparently destined to stand out. In her 2006 memoir, “Spiraling Through the School of Life,” she remembered being told by her great-grandmother that she would one day be in “front of a screen” and would “command” her own audiences.

By the mid-1970s, she had lived out her fate well enough to tell The New York Times that she no longer denied herself the right to call herself great.

“Now I don’t say that,” she said. “I can do Shakespeare, Ibsen, English accents, Irish accents, no accent, stand on my head, tap dance, sing, look 17 or look 70.” 

A gifted comic and dramatic performer, Ladd had a long career in television and on stage before breaking through as a film performer in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 release “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” She earned an Oscar nomination for supporting actor for her turn as the acerbic, straight-talking Flo, and went on to appear in dozens of movies over the following decades. 

Her many credits included “Chinatown,” “Primary Colors” and two other movies for which she received best supporting nods, “Wild at Heart” and “Rambling Rose,” both of which co-starred her daughter. She also continued to work in television, with appearances in “ER,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Alice,” the spinoff from “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” among others.

Through marriage and blood relations, Ladd was tied to the arts. Tennessee Williams was a second cousin, and first husband Bruce Dern, Laura’s father, was himself an Academy Award nominee. Ladd and Laura Dern achieved the rare feat of mother-and-daughter nominees for their work in “Rambling Rose.”