Laura Dern
☼ Born on 10 December 1967, in Saint John's Health Center, Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California, USA
Biography
Laura Dern was born on February 10, 1967 in Los Angeles, the daughter of actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. Dern was exposed to movie sets and the movie industry from infancy, and obtained several bit parts as a child. Her parents divorced when Dern was two and Dern lost contact with her father for several years as a result.
Her parents' background and her own early taste of the movie-making world soon convinced the young Dern to pursue acting herself. Like so many young actors, her decision may have been influenced by social awkwardness -- the child of 1960s counterculture parents, she was steeped in Eastern mysticism and political radicalism, and was seen as an oddball by her more conservative classmates. Even before her teens, she had achieved most of her impressive 5' 10" height and was rail-skinny with a slouching posture.. Perhaps the nine-year-old Dern found refuge by studying acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute.
The first success for the young Dern came in 1980, with a role in Adrian Lyne's Foxes (1980), a teen movie starring Jodie Foster. She followed this with several small parts, or parts in small movies, such as Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982) and Teachers (1984), as a student who has an affair with a teacher. (Her mother objected to her active presence on movie sets at age thirteen, which required Dern to sue for emancipation so she could play her role in "The Fabulous Stains"). Her next roles, as the blind girl who befriends the deform
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ed boy in Mask (1985), and as a teen-aged girl whose sexual awakening collides with a mysterious older man in Smooth Talk (1985), gave her career an important boost. Dern appeared to have made it with a leading role in David Lynch's acclaimed Blue Velvet (1986), but it was four years before her next notable film, and this was the bizarre Wild at Heart (1990), also directed by Lynch.
The following year, Dern starred in Rambling Rose (1991), which would become her signature performance, as a sexually-precocious, free-spirited young housemaid in the South in the 1930s. Dern earned an Oscar nomination for her performance, and so did her mother and co-star, Diane Ladd. Dern continues to win prominent roles on the big screen, often in smaller, highly-regarded human dramas such as October Sky (1999), I Am Sam (2001) and We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004), although she is perhaps most widely known for her repeat role as Ellie Sattler in the summer adventure movies Jurassic Park (1993) and Jurassic Park III (2001), or for her guest performance on Ellen (1994), as the woman to whom Ellen finally comes out as a lesbian.
Dern's pre-teen gawkiness matured into lithe beauty, but this doesn't prevent Dern from fearlessly throwing herself into a wide variety of roles which are sometimes unflattering, an excellent example being her unflinchingly comic portrayal of an intensely annoying loser whose pregnancy becomes a social and political football in Citizen Ruth (1996). This results in Dern being one of the most interesting actors working in Hollywood today.
Having previously dated such Hollywood talent as Treat Williams, Renny Harlin, Kyle MacLachlan, Jeff Goldblum and Billy Bob Thornton, Dern eventually married musician Ben Harper in 2005. Early in her career, Dern was roommate to Marianne Williamson, the spirituality guru. Dern attended two days of college at UCLA and one semester at USC.
In the role of actor
Jurassic World: Dominion (16/06/2022)
Dinosaurs roam the Earth as a new global threat arises in Jurassic World: Dominion. Following the events that resulted in dinosaurs freely roaming the planet, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) have been living in seclusion with their adoptive daughter Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), the cloned granddaughter of Jurassic Park co-founder […]
Little Women (07/01/2020)
Greta Gerwig writes and directs this new adaptation of the classic novel with Little Women. The March sisters of Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh), and Beth (Eliza Scanlen) grew up together with their mother Marmee (Laura Dern), while their father (Bob Odenkirk) fights in the Civil War. Of the four, Jo […]
Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy (17/09/2018)
The true story of cult literary icon J.T. LeRoy is told in Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy. Laura Albert (Laura Dern) is a musician and writer, who wrote the autobiographical novel “Sarah,” under the pseudonym of a 19 year old boy named Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy. While Laura frequently does phone interviews as J.T., the constant request for pubic appearances results […]
The Founder (25/01/2017)
An entrepreneurial salesman turns a family owned burger stand into the world’s largest fast food chain in The Founder. Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) is a traveling milkshake machine salesman, who becomes curious when an unusually large order to made by a burger stand in San Bernardino, California. Travelling to the stand, Ray meats brother Dick and Mac […]
Wild (10/12/2014)
From director Jean-Marc Vallée (Café de Flore, Dallas Buyers Club) comes this drama based on the memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) is a young woman desperate to escape her troubled life of drug use and promiscuous sex. As her way to find herself, […]
Little Fockers (02/01/2011)
It has become somewhat of a tradition for me to always include Meet the Parents and its sequel Meet the Fockers amongst the DVDs I take with me to my family’s cottage and I often will watch both films over the course of an afternoon. I thought the first film was (and still is) a […]