Veteran American actress Diane Ladd, a three-time Academy Award nominee celebrated for her powerful portrayals of complex women, has died at the age of 89, her daughter, actress Laura Dern, announced on Monday.
Ladd passed away peacefully at her home in California.
Over a career spanning seven decades, Ladd became known for her depth, warmth, and fearlessness on screen.
She earned Oscar nominations for her supporting roles in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), Wild at Heart (1990), and Rambling Rose (1991), the latter earning her and her daughter Laura Dern a place in history as the first and only mother-daughter duo nominated for Academy Awards for the same film in the same year.
“She is just the greatest actress ever,” Dern once said of her mother. “She leads with a boundarylessness… she doesn’t care what anybody thinks.”
Born Rose Diane Lanier on November 29, 1935, in Meridian, Mississippi, Ladd was the only child of a veterinarian and an actress. She began acting on stage in New York in the early 1950s after a brief stint as a model and dancer at the Copacabana nightclub.
A member of the Actor’s Studio, she made her off-Broadway debut in Orpheus Descending, written by her distant cousin Tennessee Williams, and soon transitioned to television, appearing in Perry Mason, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Fugitive.
Her breakthrough came with Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, where she played a sharp-tongued waitress alongside Ellen Burstyn. Later, she earned acclaim for her vivid roles in Wild at Heart, David Lynch’s surreal crime drama, and Rambling Rose, a Southern coming-of-age tale.
Ladd’s filmography included over 120 credits, from Chinatown (1974) to Joy (2015), and she received three Emmy nominations for performances in Touched by an Angel, Grace Under Fire, and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
Beyond acting, Ladd wrote, directed, and published widely. She directed and starred in the 1995 comedy Mrs. Munck and co-authored the 2023 memoir Honey, Baby, Mine with her daughter, chronicling their intimate conversations during walks that helped Ladd recover from a severe lung disease.
Ladd’s personal life was marked by both tragedy and resilience. She lost her first daughter in a 1962 accident but went on to give birth to Laura five years later, despite doctors saying she could not conceive again.
Married three times, she remained active in Hollywood well into her 80s.
In 2010, Ladd, Dern, and Laura Dern received side-by-side stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a fitting tribute to a family deeply woven into American film history.
“Art is just a mirror,” Ladd told The New York Times in 2023. “That’s why we go see movies: to learn who we are.”
Source: Reuters
Written By Rodney Mbua
