The cause of death for actress Diane Ladd was acute on chronic hypoxic respiratory failure, according to her death certificate, obtained by PEOPLE. Both interstitial lung disease and esophageal dysmotility also contributed.
Ladd, who was 89, was cremated Nov. 10, according to the document.
Known for her roles in movies such Wild at Heart, Chinatown, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, the actress died Nov. 3, her daughter, Laura Dern, confirmed at the time.
Diane Ladd and daughter Laura Dern pictured in 2015.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/WireImage
“My amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother passed with me beside her this morning at her home in Ojai, Calif.” Dern said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. “She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created. We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now.”
In more than six decades on the silver screen, Ladd was nominated for three Oscars (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Wild at Heart, and 1999’s Rambling Rose.)
Her prolific list of credits extended from TV in the late 50s — episodes of The Fugitive, Perry Mason, and Gunsmoke — to the 2020s, in which she appeared on Young Sheldon. In 1989, she had a memorable role as the mother of Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold in holiday favorite National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. She worked with her daughter on several projects.
Ladd, Dern, and Bruce Dern, the father of Laura who was married to Ladd from 1960 to 1969, were honored with adjoining stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010.
Ladd and her daughter became especially close in the last few years of her life, after the mother was told she might have just months to live because she had the lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. On doctor’s instructions, the two began taking long walks, which resulted in them talking in-depth about subjects such as grief and heartbreak.
Dern said it “grew into a profound deepening of our relationship,” in a May 2023 interview with PEOPLE. Their conversations also produced a book that year: Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love, which was a New York Times bestseller.
Bruce paid tribute to her after she died. “She was a great value as a decades-long board member of [the Screen Actors Guild], giving a real actress’ point of view,” he told EW. “She lived a good life. She saw everything the way it was. She was a great teammate to her fellow actors. She was funny, clever, gracious.”
He added, “But most importantly to me, she was a wonderful mother to our incredible wunderkind daughter. And for that I will be forever grateful to her.”