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With Laura\u2019s father, Bruce Dern<\/p>\n
COURTESY OF DIANE LADD,<\/p>\n
At the last minute, the doctor gave Dern a scrap of hope and a course of action. If Dern could only get her mother to walk a bit and expand her lung capacity, it might help raise her oxygen levels, after which, who knows? It\u2019d take 15 minutes of walking a day and no less, however, so Dern must devise a plan to get her mother, who by that point found it exhausting and painful to walk even a handful of steps, to comply.<\/p>\n
Dern appealed to Ladd\u2019s natural inclination to tell stories, and started interrogating her about her life to distract her from the physical effort of walking. Because Dern realised this might be a last chance to ask her mother all the questions that were left, she upped the ante, asking things she\u2019d avoided or ignored or just hadn\u2019t really thought about before. Ladd, for her part equally aware this might be a last opportunity, answered honestly. \u201cMost parents, they lie to their kids because they want to be loved and adored, right?\u201d she tells me now. \u201cAnd then the kids lie to their parents because they want to be loved and adored. But because we thought I was dying, we opened our big mouths and told everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Dern\u2019s walks miraculously paid off and Ladd did not die (\u201cI did not! I did two movies, a TV series and I wrote a book\u201d), they decided to transcribe the conversations, which Dern had taped onto her phone so she might share them with her children (Ellery, now 21, and Jaya, 18), and publish them. \u201cWhen someone said to us, \u2018I think you should share this,\u2019 the only reason we said yes,\u201d Dern says, \u201cbecause we\u2019re private people, was: it might do for anyone else what it did for us, which is, let us ask the questions now.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"'Wild](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/methode\/times\/prod\/web\/bin\/b8059899-6dbd-49fb-a884-d0d3c5bf5018.jpg\")
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Ladd and Dern with Wild at Heart director David Lynch, third left, and co-stars Nicolas Cage, Isabella Rossellini and Willem Dafoe<\/p>\n
REX FEATURES<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore it\u2019s too late,\u201d Ladd finishes.<\/p>\n
Their book is called Honey, Baby, Mine, after an old folk song recorded by Woody Guthrie in the Forties as Crawdad Song, a favourite lullaby of baby Laura Dern, and it is wonderful. A little schmaltzy at times \u2013 how could it not be? Dern and Ladd thought they were losing each other \u2013 but also raw, gossipy, funny, delicate, endlessly compassionate, at moments devastating, at others spectacularly wise. It covers their childhoods, Ladd\u2019s education at a finishing school (\u201cYou had to pick up a pencil with your lips and roll it with your tongue. Maybe that\u2019s how I became a great kisser\u201d), their (prolific, acclaimed) careers, their miserable divorces, Dern\u2019s broken engagement, which wasn\u2019t actually a broken engagement\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cDIANE: You\u2019ve had some rough break-ups. The one when you were engaged to\u2026<\/p>\n
LAURA: Mom, I\u2019m going to stop you right there, because I don\u2019t want to hear his name and because I can\u2019t believe you\u2019re going to repeat this rumour. That\u2019s someone that I never would have gotten engaged or married to and somehow you\u2019re believing the tabloids. And every time I read an article about myself, people say I was engaged to that person. The same way people always say I had some supersexy affair with John Cusack, whom I\u2019ve never even kissed.\u201d<\/p>\n
(I think the unnamed faux fianc\u00e9 in question is Billy Bob Thornton, whom the press misreported as having broken an engagement to Dern to marry Angelina Jolie in 2000.)<\/p>\n
![\"Film](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/methode\/times\/prod\/web\/bin\/e107b52f-4de9-4e31-8869-7e53e65a51d5.jpg\")
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Ladd and Dern in 1991\u2019s Rambling Rose<\/p>\n
REX FEATURES<\/p>\n
It covers Dern\u2019s father, the actor Bruce Dern, whom Ladd met on stage in front of an audience, divorced for various reasons \u2013 multiple infidelities among them \u2014 and whom, long after the break-up, she\u2019d draft in to help explain sex to their 12-year-old daughter. Which he did, confidently and totally ineptly, leaving Dern and her best friend, Bellina, \u201csuperconfused about why a man would need to wear a raincoat during sex. And to make it all worse, in a Playboy interview he proudly told the story of how he helped his daughter and her friend stay safe by making sure they knew all they needed to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
It includes the only conversation Dern has had with her mother about her older sister, Diane Elizabeth, who died at 18 months in an accident before Dern was born, which leads Dern to say, \u201cI guess I was the replacement child. I felt a responsibility to you and Dad and Grandma, to try to make sure you didn\u2019t have to feel that pain again,\u201d and Ladd to say, of Bruce Dern, \u201cIt always seemed to me that he didn\u2019t relax with you until you were a day older than little Diane when she died.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, of course, Honey, Baby, Mine \u2014 with a foreword by Reese Witherspoon, Dern\u2019s best friend \u2014 is punctuated with hilarious, casual, glittering reminiscences about the time Pedro Almod\u00f3var kissed Ladd\u2019s feet at the Golden Globes; the time she went to a New Year\u2019s Eve party at Norman Mailer\u2019s house with her best friend, Shelley Winters, Dern\u2019s godmother (on finding the place deserted and \u201cdusty\u201d, Winters and Ladd proceeded to clean up what turned out to be an awful lot of cocaine); and the premiere of 1990\u2019s Wild at Heart, in which Dern stars with her boyfriend at the time, Nicolas Cage, and Ladd, and which Ladd remembers primarily because, \u201cYou and Nicolas Cage were wearing matching outfits.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"ELLE's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/methode\/times\/prod\/web\/bin\/010e7645-8617-4256-81ce-6c2547e27edf.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
With Dern\u2019s children, Ellery and Jaya, 2017<\/p>\n
GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n
It is a charming and revelatory book, more authentic really than anything else you\u2019re likely to read, because\u2026 I suppose it was a pure accident, I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn accident, like somebody hit me with a car, ha ha,\u201d says Ladd. \u201cBy the way, you\u2019re the first person that\u2019s interviewing us that\u2019s read the book. You\u2019re numero uno! No 1!\u201d<\/p>\n
God, I love her, I realise. If I\u2019d been Laura Dern, I\u2019d have done whatever it took to keep Diane Ladd alive too. <\/p>\n
DIANE LADD WAS BORN IN 1935 in Laurel, Mississippi, and raised in Meridian. She\u2019s the only daughter of Mary Garey, a housewife, and Preston Ladner, a vet who sold poultry feed. Her family was not in, or interested in, showbusiness. \u201cI was going to be a lawyer,\u201d Ladd tells me. \u201cI had a part-time scholarship to Louisiana State University, but that was only because I had a cousin who was the secretary of state at the time. But God had other plans for me. I wanted to be an actress. Since I was six years old, I knew I was supposed to be an actress. I mean, what kind of actress are you going to be if you\u2019re down in Mississippi and your father\u2019s selling medicine to chickens and livestock? What are the chances of becoming an actress? But the only thing was, I did have one cousin that was in the business \u2014 Tennessee Williams<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Williams was a distant cousin of Ladd\u2019s, one she didn\u2019t actually meet until he was already famous, when she (aged just 17) implored him to come and see her perform in his play Orpheus Descending in a tiny theatre in New York, in the knowledge it would help raise the show\u2019s profile and get it transferred to off-Broadway \u2014 which it did.<\/p>\n In the Eighties<\/p>\n GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, he had a hard time getting there. Believe me \u2014 from Mississippi. And in a way so did I, except my angels kind of picked me up and ushered me forward.\u201d Angels, maybe \u2014 Ladd was raised Catholic and still believes; talent, graft, the sort of hustle that had her call on Tennessee Williams, certainly; also the director David Lynch, who cast her opposite Dern in Wild at Heart. (According to Honey, Baby, Mine, Lynch recently gave Dern\u2019s son, Ellery, a DVD of the film, telling him, \u201cWait to watch this one until you\u2019re 30.\u201d Ellery replied, \u201cWhy? Is my mom crazy in it?\u201d Lynch said, \u201cIt\u2019s not you seeing your mom I\u2019m worried about. It\u2019s you seeing your grandmother that might be worth the wait.\u201d)<\/p>\n Ladd has more than 120 film and TV credits to her name, and far more if you factor in her theatrical career. She was even offered a job on the TV show Chesapeake Shores moments before one of the earliest walks she and Dern took together. (\u201cHow am I going to work with a cannula in my nose?\u201d she asks Dern in the book. Her daughter tells her they can write it into Ladd\u2019s part.)<\/p>\n For Dern, raised in LA by Ladd and Bruce Dern (an actor with a career as wide-ranging and enduring as Ladd and Dern themselves), with Shelley Winters knocking about, \u201cMy experience is the polar opposite. It\u2019s all I knew. What I wonder is, if I had not grown up in it, would I have found acting the way Mum did? I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAh, if it\u2019s meant to be\u2026\u201d says Ladd, who can afford to be philosophical, given the trajectory of her daughter\u2019s career. Aged six, Dern was an extra in 1973\u2019s White Lightning (in which her mother starred); by 18, she was cast as a lead in David Lynch\u2019s Blue Velvet. Her career hasn\u2019t faltered for a moment in the intervening decades, Netflix\u2019s Marriage Story<\/a> and HBO\u2019s Big Little Lies<\/a> being just two of her recent, critically and commercially acclaimed wild successes.<\/p>\n According to Honey, Baby, Mine, Ladd hadn\u2019t wanted her daughter to follow in her footsteps.<\/p>\n \u201cLAURA: What are you talking about? Yes, you did. You were delighted when I booked jobs as a kid.<\/p>\n DIANE: No, Laura.<\/p>\n LAURA: What were you most worried about?<\/p>\n DIANE: My God in heaven, Laura! The rejection! The unsteadiness of it!\u201d<\/p>\n Later in the book, Dern talks about the \u201cdangerous people\u201d populating their industry, how they\u2019d both been around them.<\/p>\n I ask if they\u2019d care to name some.<\/p>\n With Bruce Dern<\/p>\n REX FEATURES<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re young, you walk through evil without knowing it and, if you\u2019re lucky, your angels and your karma protect you from it,\u201d says Ladd. \u201cEven in New Orleans, when I was 16 and I was going to school there and I was doing little theatre plays \u2014 which I got spotted in, which is how I ended up being jerked out of New Orleans \u2014 long story. But then I danced in Las Vegas in a chorus. I was a Copa Girl!\u201d Copa Girls were the showgirls who performed at the Copa Room in the Sands Hotel on the Las Vegas strip. \u201cAnd when you\u2019re a Copa Girl, you don\u2019t mix and mingle with anybody. You\u2019re protected. They just look at you. But in between the shows, they like you to come up and eat and be adored. And if anybody walks towards your table, they come out of the woodwork, like\u2026\u201d She growls. \u201c \u2018Don\u2019t talk to these women,\u2019 and you\u2019re protected there. But you\u2019ve got a lot of really weird people around.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think in every industry,\u201d says Dern, \u201cthere\u2019s the abuse of power of how you make it up the food chain. I think there are dangerous people we have all been in the company of.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it\u2019s not just men,\u201d says Ladd. \u201cOne of the worst people I knew was a lady\u2026 When she got her position [of power] she was worse than any man I ever met.\u201d<\/p>\n Even before I read their book, back when I was merely a consumer of their work, neither Ladd nor Dern struck me as especially interested in fame. Something about their conduct off screen, as well as their prickly, unpretty, tricky-woman role choices made me assume they were both slightly above anything as naff as pursuing or embracing fame.<\/p>\n \u201cDidn\u2019t think about it,\u201d Ladd says. \u201cIf you need fame, it\u2019s only to sell the movie or to get you the part. You have to go for it, but don\u2019t let it take over.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOr be the goal,\u201d says Dern.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth her father and I never thought of ourselves as movie stars,\u201d says Ladd.<\/p>\n Was \u2014\u2013 is \u2014 money important?<\/p>\n \u201cJust worry about how much money you make if the guy sitting next to you in all the same scenes, working the same number of days, is making 15 times what you are,\u201d says Dern.<\/p>\n \u201cI was never paid as much as men,\u201d says Ladd. \u201cMarlon Brando asked me, \u2018What do you do with all the money you make, Diane?\u2019 I looked at him. \u2018Do you know how much I made for Alice Doesn\u2019t Live Here Anymore? [the 1974 film in which Ladd starred with Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson]. I made $5,000 for that whole movie. That\u2019s right. That\u2019s all I made. And I won a British Academy award for that, and they didn\u2019t even give me a bonus. And I was raising a kid on that money. So don\u2019t talk to me \u2014 you go to Washington for a meeting and they think you light cigars with hundred dollar bills! Now I make more than $5,000, but 50 years later, I would hope so.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, quite out of nowhere:<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, I want everything good for you in the world. When\u2019s your birthday? Month, day. I don\u2019t care about the year.\u201d<\/p>\n August 21, I say.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s my son\u2019s birthday,\u201d says Dern.<\/p>\n No way, I say. Because it\u2019s interesting, after reading the passage in your book where you row about Ladd giving Ellery \u2014 then six \u2014 a haircut without Dern\u2019s permission, cutting his long hair short, I keep thinking about the time my maternal grandmother, Kathleen, looked after me, when I must have been about the same age, and gave me an unauthorised haircut, and\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cNo!\u201d Ladd interrupts.<\/p>\n No?<\/p>\n \u201cNo, no, no, no, no, no.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m still mad at her,\u201d says Dern. \u201cIt opened a can of worms and it\u2019s only got bigger since the book.\u201d<\/p>\n We shouldn\u2019t talk about it?<\/p>\n \u201cPolitics and my son\u2019s haircut,\u201d says Dern.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re off the table,\u201d says Ladd.<\/p>\n Given the fallout on the rehashing of one 15-year-old haircut, you might wonder what other ructions await the publication of the book, who else might be enraged and by what. Honey, Baby, Mine is by nature honest, raw and exposing \u2014 there would be no point in it otherwise. Long-buried family infidelities emerge, along with the pain Dern felt on having her mother leave her while she went away to work, the pain she felt on leaving her own kids, not to mention the slow, sad walk past the house in which Ladd and Bruce Dern lived \u2014 \u201cGreta Garbo lived here before we did\u201d \u2014 the place where their first daughter, Diane Elizabeth, had lived and died.<\/p>\n Are they nervous about the book\u2019s reception, about who else might kick off?<\/p>\n \u201cHoney, if I was nervous about how [anything] would be received, I\u2019d never have been an actress,\u201d says Ladd.<\/p>\n OK, but how about the feelings of people close to them? Bruce Dern, for example, who is (I would say) portrayed affectionately, if not entirely flatteringly?<\/p>\n \u201cHe hasn\u2019t read it yet,\u201d says Ladd.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to drop you at his house today and you should give it to him and sit there [as he reads it],\u201d says Dern. Then, to me, \u201cBut he knows, he knows. He knows everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Dern and Ladd<\/p>\n VICTORIA STEVENS<\/p>\n What about Mary? Mary Garey was Ladd\u2019s proper yet not-at-all mother, who cared for Dern when Ladd was away filming; a woman who, on attending the bridal shower of Ladd\u2019s third marriage (to her current husband, Robert Hunter), presented her daughter \u2014 by then in her fifties \u2014 with a black sheer negligee, the hem of which was trimmed with faux fur and feathers. \u201cI just love that fur along the bottom,\u201d Ladd had said to her 80-year-old mother. \u201cYeah, it\u2019s to keep your neck warm,\u201d Mary replied. She died in 2002, but what do they think Mary would have made of their book?<\/p>\n \u201cI think she\u2019d be so proud,\u201d says Dern. \u201cAnd she\u2019d wish we\u2019d put more pictures of her in it. \u2018How come I\u2019m not on the cover?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n I ask Dern and Ladd if there was a moment when they realised their walks had worked, and Ladd was going to keep living.<\/p>\n \u201cMmm. I feel like we continue with it,\u201d says Dern cautiously. \u201cThat\u2019s the one thing that\u2019s heartbreaking. The minute a doctor says, \u2018You may not make it six months\u2026\u2019 I feel like you\u2019ve spent these four years going, \u2018Well, I made it to here,\u2019 but you can\u2019t let go of that voice that\u2019s in the head completely.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, I\u2019ll live another 20 years. I\u2019ve got things to do,\u201d says Ladd breezily.<\/p>\n On which, it occurs to me that this book would make an incredible film.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is beauty in that idea,\u201d says Dern. \u201cSomething cinematic about a mother and a daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n Exactly! In which case, who would play you?<\/p>\n \u201cI think you should,\u201d says Ladd.<\/p>\n I\u2019m deeply flattered, I say, but completely without acting talent.<\/p>\n \u201cMum has already cast you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve already cast you. The key to being an actor \u2014 and I think Shelley Winters [said this] when I starred in a play with Bob De Niro. Forty-four years ago, Bob and I starred in an off-Broadway show together, and then we came back in a reunion in David O Russell\u2019s film Joy<\/a>. The most important thing to be an actor is to be able to listen. Not just with your ear, but with the ear of your heart. And you did that today while talking to us. I send you a lot of white light around you to protect you, and may you fulfil your destiny with joy and love for the highest good for yourself, OK?\u201d<\/p>\n Please stop, I say. I may cry.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd if you ever come this way, the bed is made, the food is on the table and the door is open for you. Do you hear me?\u201d<\/p>\n I do hear Diane Ladd, and I may well take her up on it. Diane Ladd died on November 3, 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four and a bit years ago, in 2018, when she was 83, the Bafta and Golden Globe-winning actress…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-261973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Diane](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/methode\/times\/prod\/web\/bin\/ce7035ea-5d0d-42e6-9833-d9f05659f329.jpg\")
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Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding) by Laura Dern and Diane Ladd is published on April 25 by Coronet at \u00a322<\/p>\n