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
Jeanies Clique (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 Die Aufsässigen (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 deformed boy in
Die Maske (1985), and as a teen-aged girl whose
sexual awakening collides with a mysterious older man in
Bedrohliches Geflüster (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: Die Geschichte von Sailor und Lula (1990), also directed
by Lynch.
The following year, Dern starred in
Die Lust der schönen 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),
Ich bin Sam (2001) and
Wir leben nicht mehr hier (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
Baby Business (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.
