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Wed 2 September 2026 21:45, UK
Laura Dern was born into Hollywood thanks to her parents, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, whose connections allowed her to bag her first ever onscreen appearance when she was just six years old in the film White Lightning.
It was a blink and you’ll miss it part, as was her cameo in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore the following year, but the young actor was becoming increasingly familiar with film sets as a result. The 1980s were really her time to shine, though, as a supporting role in the criminally underrated feminist punk film Ladies and Gentlemen…The Fabulous Stains was followed by the likes of Smooth Talk, another overlooked film in which she turns in an incredible leading performance, and, of course, Blue Velvet.
Her collaborations with David Lynch would become defining, with Dern appearing in Wild at Heart, the filmmaker’s wildly camp tale of romance and the violent forces that sometimes get in the way, just a few years later, while her subsequent movie Rambling Rose earned her an Oscar nomination (her mother also earned one for the same film).
It was safe to say that Dern was a full-fledged star, and when Jurassic Park followed two years later, it confirmed her position in Hollywood. As Ellie Sattler, she earned praise, and since this was her first truly major blockbuster, where she went next was incredibly important. The movie has grossed a whopping $1.058billion since it was released in 1993, and to some, Dern will always be Ellie before anyone else.
Steven Spielberg’s film was significant for many of us, those dinosaurs stomping into our childhoods and teaching us the power of true movie magic, but the actor knew that she wanted her career to be more than just big hitters like Jurassic Park, and thanks to a conversation with Martin Scorsese, she realised every role she picked was vital.
“I was, in his words, building a body of work as opposed to being a working actor. He said I was [building a body of work] like a filmmaker would, and that I should always stay true to that,” she revealed to Fast Company. Staying true to herself meant refusing to give in to the demands of Hollywood’s blockbuster system, especially considering that she’d already found acclaim in rather unconventional titles like Blue Velvet, so in the wake of Jurassic Park, “the biggest choice” Dern subsequently had to make was what to do next.
“It was a very luxurious time, and I was being offered a lot of movies. I turned down a lot of things that were immensely successful,” she admitted, “Instead, I chose to do Citizen Ruth, with a first-time writer and director, Alexander Payne. It was a seemingly very brave choice, but I had an agent, Judy Hofflund, who really got it.”
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
Before Payne would make Election and, later down the line, The Holdovers, he’d recruit Dern to star as the drug-addicted Ruth Stoops, who, after getting pregnant for the fifth time, finds herself in the middle of a nationwide abortion debate. Citizen Ruth provides a compelling alternative to the stereotypically masculine slacker comedy, and Dern called it a “life-changing role”.
It affirmed to her that what she was doing was what felt right in refusing to follow a path that she felt pressured to go down, and she found consistent success in fulfilling roles, from Inland Empire to Marriage Story (which won her an Oscar) as a result.
