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The Oscar-nominated actress, mother of Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, has died in her home in Ojai
Diane Ladd, veteran actress and mother of Laura Dern, has passed away at the age of 89. “My amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother, Diane Ladd, passed with me beside her this morning, at her home in Ojai, Calif.,” Dern, 58, said in a statement to PEOPLE on Monday, Nov. 3.
“She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and an empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created. We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now,” Dern added.
During her long career, Diane Ladd appeared in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (and the TV sitcom Alice that followed), Wild at Heart and Rambling Rose. Over her film and television career spanning several decades, she was thrice nominated for an Oscar and also received three Emmy nods.
Diane Ladd: from Mississippi childhood to early Hollywood roles
Born Nov. 29, 1935, in Laurel, Mississippi, Ladd was a child performer and made her TV debut before she landed her first film credit
Diane Ladd, known as the only child of a veterinarian Preston Paul Ladner and an actress Mary Bernadette Ladner, started acting, dancing, and singing from her early years. When she entered the Hollywood world, she changed her name from Ladner to Ladd and made appearances in such TV shows as Naked City, Perry Mason and Mr. Novak from the 1950s and 60s. Ladd got her first film credit in the 1966 crime drama The Wild Angels, a movie that also starred Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern and Peter Fonda — the latter becoming a longtime friend and collaborator.
Diane Ladd remembers receiving protection on her first film set
During the foggy night of The Wild Angels, Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern took the cast under their wing, she said.
Diane Ladd brought back the scary incident in her very first film The Wild Angels when a group of bikers in the fog threatened the crew. “I remember when we were filming Wild Angels, my very first film, we were practically children back then,” Ladd told PEOPLE in August 2019. She also mentioned that Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern “were the ones who saved us, brought us out of the danger and took us to safety. Bruce was like that, his bravery always shone through.”
Diane Ladd was an Oscar Nominee for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and had a Long Film and TV Career
After Her Golden Globe Win and Oscar Nomination, Diane Ladd Had a Long Career On Screen
Eight years after her debut, Diane Ladd was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Martin Scorsese’s 1974 dramedy Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. She played the indelible Flo, and the film, which was turned into a CBS series called Alice, was quite popular. In 1981 Diane Ladd was awarded a Golden Globe for the best supporting actress in a TV series. Later on, she was featured in such movies as Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), 28 Days (2000), Charlie’s War (2003), Joy (2015), and Gigi & Nate (2022). Besides this, she was a recurring character in such TV series as Kingdom Hospital and Chesapeake S hores.
Diane Ladd: marriages, motherhood and a heartbreaking loss
Trio of marriages including Bruce Dern and William A. Shea Jr.; the loss of an infant daughter she survived
Diane Ladd had three husbands over the course of her life. She married the actor Bruce Dern in 1960; the two had two daughters together, Diane and Laura. Ladd subsequently married William A. Shea Jr., the marriage lasted from 1969 to 1976. Her firstborn daughter, Diane, passed away at 18 months after a swimming‑pool accident — an incident that Ladd stated still remained with her. “She hit her head and knocked herself out. And it all happened instantly. And she died, and you will never get over that,” Ladd told CBS News in 2023. “No matter what you say to yourself or who you say it to, it doesn’t make any difference. The child is not supposed to die before the parent.”
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Diane Ladd says her daughter’s death was a factor in her separation from Bruce Dern
In 1992, Ladd shared with Parade that the death of her eldest daughter, Diane, was the reason why she divorced Bruce Dern in 1969 after nine years of marriage. “We went through the death of our daughter together and thought another child would help us, but we were really beaten,” she told, explaining how the bereavement pushed them apart.
She also pondered raising Laura after the tragedy, confessing that she had a hard time deciding between protecting her and giving her freedom: “I was scared to death, I was alone with Laura. I had to make a big effort not to be too protective because I had already lost one child.” Ladd recalled that she eventually let Laura “be a free thinker,” thus facilitating her growth into a unique person. Laura, in her turn, remembered her parents’ ambivalence towards acting: “Be a lawyer, be a doctor, be a leper missionary, but don’t be an actress!”
Diane Ladd and Laura Dern’s sharing of a personal crisis turned into a touching memoir
Mother and daughter after Diane’s 2018 lung disease diagnosis Ladd and Laura Dern turned walks and honest talks into the 2023 book Honey, Baby, Mine
After the two memoirs Spiraling Through the School of Life (2006) and A Bad Afternoon for a Piece of Cake (2016) were individually written by Diane Ladd and daughter Laura Dern, the latter two in 2023 collaborated to write a family memoir Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding). The book is a recorded account of numerous walks and frank talks that were a reaction to Ladd’s 2018 diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; Laura told PEOPLE that those profound talks “filled us with love” and were “very healing,” hence, they became inseparable more than ever.
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Diane Ladd and Laura Dern on honesty, healing and their memoir
Ladd, upon the writing of their joint memoir, said that parents often hide the truth from their children in order to protect them: “As parents we are not telling our children all our truths because we want to be loved and respected. So in fact, we lie a little. I found out that there were things that I had not told her which I should have because I felt that it would make her feel guilty or that she would be burdened. Instead, it was a release for her.”
Laura spoke highly of her mother’s honesty: “She is the most open and honest person you can think of. You know exactly what she is feeling… Even when it was a scornful face or an angry face, it was so complete and told so many stories that I always felt the love coming from her.”
It is mentioned that Diane Ladd’s husband, Robert Charles Hunter, passed away in July at 77.
