Laura Dern Biography for

Laura Dern - Biography
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http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000368/bio
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Biography for
Laura Dern
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Date of Birth
10 February 1967, Los Angeles, California, USA
Sponsored links
Birth Name
Laura Elizabeth Dern
Personal Biographies
Making professional narrative films
about friends and loved ones
www.edv.uk.com
Height
5' 10½" (1.79 m)
Mini Biography
Laura Dern was born on February 10, 1967 into a moviemaking family - her father is
Bruce Dern and her mother is 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.
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Her parents' background and her own early taste of the moviemaking 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 60s counterculture parents, she was
steeped in Eastern mysticism and political radicalism, and was seen as an oddball by her more conservative classmates. Her gawky physical
appearance didn't help - even before her teens, she had achieved most of her impressive 5' 10" height, was rail-skinny (other than
precociously wide hips), had huge feet and a slouching posture, and for all this was often teased by classmates. 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 Foxes (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 (1981) and Teachers
(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 Mask (1985), and as a teenaged girl whose sexual awakening collides with a mysterious older man in Smooth Talk (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 (1990), also directed by Lynch.
The following year, Dern starred in Rambling 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), I Am Sam (2001) and We Don't Live Here Anymore (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 Citizen Ruth (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.
IMDb Mini Biography By: Larry-115
Spouse
Ben Harper (23 December 2005 - present) 2 children
Trivia
Born at 7:48am-PST
Daughter of Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd.
Once engaged to Billy Bob Thornton.
Once engaged to Jeff Goldblum for 2 years (1995-1997).
Her great-grandfather was governor of Utah.
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Laura Dern - Biography
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http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000368/bio
Welcomed first child, son Ellery Walker, with boyfriend Ben Harper in Los Angeles. [21 August 2001]
Had an elder sister, born in 1961, who drowned at the age of 18 months, years before Laura was born.
Granddaughter of Mary Lanier
When she was cast in Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1981) at the age of 13, her mother Diane Ladd refused to let her go,
feeling she was too young to leave home for a movie shoot. Laura sued for emancipation and won, but the movie wasn't a hit.
Announced engagment to Ben Harper in August 2004.
Second child, Jaya, a daughter, with boyfriend Ben Harper, born in Los Angeles on 28 November 2004.
She said that her idols are Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, and Lucille Ball.
Hers and her mother's (Diane Ladd) Oscar nominations for Rambling Rose (1991) mark the first time a mother and daughter ever received
Oscar nominations for the same movie.
Played daughter to real-life mother Diane Ladd in 4 movies: Citizen Ruth (1996), Daddy and Them (2001), Wild at Heart (1990) and White
Lightning (1973).
Both she and her mother, Diane Ladd, starred in 2 dinosaur-themed movies in 1993. Dern starred as Ellie Sattler in the box office smash
Jurassic Park, while Ladd starred in the failed indie film Carnosaur.
Has starred in two films titled "Happy Endings", one a television film in 1983 and the other an independent film in 2005.
Personal Quotes
"It's really fun to act like a bimbo. But it's fun to act like a bimbo only when people know that you really aren't one."
"I get so protective of David [Lynch], like an older sister or something, which is so absurd. He's not waiting for us to get the movie because he
doesn't think the cinema is about 'getting it'. I think he believes - which I've found very rare in filmmakers - in the intelligence of the audience,
that they're intelligent enough to discover the film and what it means within themselves."
Salary
Mask (1985) $2,000
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