Copyright Variety
Diane Ladd, a three-time Oscar-nominated actress for her roles in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Wild at Heart” and “Rambling Rose,” died Monday morning at her residence in Ojai, Calif, a representative for her daughter, Laura Dern, confirmed to Variety. Ladd was 89. The prolific Ladd drew vivid character portraits throughout her career, and, while it’s not noteworthy to have family in the business, Ladd was unusual for the number of times she and her daughter acted together. Ladd drew supporting actress Oscar nominations for Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” in which she memorably portrayed the earthy, colorful waitress Flo; David Lynch’s 1990 feature “Wild at Heart,” which saw Ladd play the wildly villainous mother of Laura Dern’s character, with a touch of the Wicked Witch of the West; and Martha Coolidge’s “Rambling Rose,” set in 1935 Georgia, in which Ladd played not the mother of Dern’s character but the defender of Dern’s sexually adventurous Rose, and for which both Ladd and Dern drew Oscar nominations. Indeed, the nominations for Ladd and Dern in “Rambling Rose” represent the only instance of a mother and daughter being nominated for the same movie. In “Rambling Rose,” Peter Travers in Rolling Stone said Ladd “brings welcome feminist bite to her role,” while in “Wild at Heart,” Travers wrote that Ladd “squeezes her juicy role with scene-stealing zest.” Reviewing “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” for New York Magazine, Judith Crist wrote of the “remarkable performance by Diane Ladd as a foul-mouthed heart-of-gold waitress-colleague.” One writer said of her: “Actress Diane Ladd is one of our great natural resources. She faintly or fiercely breathes theatrics, whichever emotion is called for.” Ladd and Dern had more recently appeared together in HBO’s 2011-13 series “Enlightened,” in which Dern starred as Amy, a self-destructive executive trying to put her life back together after she implodes. Ladd played her mother, Helen, with whom she has an awkward relationship. Ladd got a chance to shine in the series in the episode “Consider Helen,” which put her front and center. “There’s always been a profound sadness to Diane Ladd’s performance in ‘Enlightened,’ and this episode goes a long way toward elaborating on that,” critic Erik Adams wrote. The writers and Ladd run “the character through an emotional gauntlet from apathy to envy to poorly masked anger.” More recently, in David O. Russell’s film 2015 film “Joy,” starring Jennifer Lawrence, Ladd played the beloved grandmother of Lawrence’s title character, supplying gentle storybook narration. Ladd had a small but key role in the classic 1974 neo-noir “Chinatown” as Ida Sessions, a SAG-card-carrying sex worker who pretends to be Evelyn Mulwray to lure Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes into the case of Hollis Mulwray and the nefarious goings-on at the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power. Ladd played the wife of Gene Hackman’s character in the 1981 Hackman-Barbra Streisand vehicle “All Night Long”; Ladd played the mother of Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989) and of Jack Stanton (John Travolta), the lightly fictionalized version of Bill Clinton, in “Primary Colors” (1998). Other bigscreen credits include “Something Wicked This Way Comes”; Bob Rafelson’s “Black Widow”; Martha Coolidge’s “Plain Clothes”; 1992’s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me,” a screwball comedy in which she played a flirtatious but aging Southern belle alongside Mary Lanier, her own mother; “The Cemetery Club”(in which Ladd played a Jewish widow alongside Ellen Burstyn and Olympia Dukakis); “Ghosts of Mississippi”; Sandra Bullock rehab dramedy “28 Days”; and Anthony Hopkins vehicle “The World’s Fastest Indian.” Ladd and her first husband, fellow screen actor Bruce Dern, welcomed their daughter, Laura Dern, on Feb. 10, 1967. The couple divorced in 1969. As a child, Laura Dern appeared, uncredited, in a couple of Ladd’s films. Later, once they both co-starred in “Wild at Heart” and “Rambling Rose,” they appeared together in Alexander Payne’s abortion comedy “Citizen Ruth,” in which it was Dern’s turn to headline and Ladd’s to cameo uncredited. Both had substantial roles (though Dern starred) in 1996 CBS telepic “The Siege at Ruby Ridge,” and they starred as mother and daughter again in Billy Bob Thornton’s country-fried 2001 comedy “Daddy and Them.” Dern starred and Ladd had a supporting role in Showtime’s health-care issue movie “Damaged Care” (2002). The pair returned to the world of David Lynch for the exceptionally bizarre “Inland Empire,” in which Dern starred as an actress who blurs into her role and Ladd cameoed as what J. Hoberman described as a “nasty TV gossip.” Ladd tried her hand at directing in 1995 with Showtime’s “Mrs. Munck,” for which she adapted a novel by Ella Leffland. She starred opposite ex-husband Bruce Dern in the film. Ladd worked a great deal in television as well and was nominated for three Emmy awards: in 1993 for a guest appearance on “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman”; in 1994 for guest actress in a comedy series for “Grace Under Fire”; and in 1997 for guest actress in a drama series for “Touched by an Angel.” Having played Flo in Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” Ladd also appeared on the CBS sitcom based on the film, “Alice,” but in a different role: waitress Belle Dupree, who appeared on the show for a single season in 1980-1981, after the TV series’ Flo, played by Polly Holliday, was spun off onto her own show. She had earlier been a member of the cast of soap opera “The Secret Storm.” Ladd also starred in the 2004 horror miniseries “Stephen King Presents Kingdom Hospital,” did guest spots on series including “L.A. Law,” “ER” and “Cold Case,” and appeared in a long list of TV movies. Rose Diane Ladnier was born in Meridian, Miss., but moved to New York City while still a teen. Ladd worked as a model and a dancer at the Copacabana nightclub before making her stage debut in Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending.” In 1961, Ladd debuted in her first feature film, “Something Wild.” The actress made her debut on television in the format’s very earliest days, performing in the TV series “The Big Story,” in an 1949 episode called “The Small of Death.” Her first feature roles were uncredited, including in “Murder, Inc.” and “40 Pounds of Trouble.” With Bruce Dern, she appeared in Roger Corman’s 1966 bikers movie “Wild Angels,” the film that inspired Peter Fonda to make “Easy Rider.” She also appeared in Mark Rydell’s “The Reivers”; the Paul Newman-directed “WUSA”; and, just before “Chinatown,” the Burt Reynolds vehicle “White Lightning.” Ladd’s book of short stories “A Bad Afternoon for a Piece of Cake” was published in 2013. She was married three times, the first time to Bruce Dern from 1960 to 1969, the second time to William A. Shea Jr. from 1969 to 1977. She married her third husband, Robert Charles Hunter, in 1999. Hunter died in July at 77. Ladd is survived by her daughter Laura Dern and two grandchildren.
