Laura Dern Has the Spirit of Seventies Cinema

"The couple split up when Dern was two, and she grew up amid the chaotic, creative ferment of seventies cinema, when Hollywood was embracing off-kilter actresses such as Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Dern's mother, who died on Monday, at the age of eighty-nine. In Martin Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," in which Ladd plays a diner waitress, the seven-year-old Dern wound up as an extra at the counter, for which she had to eat nineteen ice-cream cones."

"Perhaps because she's a daughter of the New Hollywood, an era when art had a tenuous edge over commerce, Dern has always made unorthodox choices. In the nineties, instead of following up "Jurassic Park" with the blockbusters on offer, she starred in Alexander Payne's abortion satire, "Citizen Ruth," and helped Ellen DeGeneres come out as gay on her sitcom. (Dern was so besieged by death threats that she had to hire security.)"

Laura Dern was conceived on the set of The Wild Angels, a 1966 Roger Corman film starring her parents Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. Her parents split when she was two, and she grew up in 1970s cinema. At seven she was an extra in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and ate nineteen ice-cream cones. In the 1980s she gained legal emancipation, moved into her own apartment at seventeen, and left UCLA to star in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. She brought an innate incandescence to roles from Jurassic Park to Enlightened. In the 1990s she chose unconventional projects like Citizen Ruth and supported Ellen DeGeneres's coming out, drawing death threats that required security.

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