'Wild at Heart' actress Diane Ladd dies at 89

Pallade Veneta - 'Wild at Heart' actress Diane Ladd dies at 89

CULTURE 03.11.2025

'Wild at Heart' actress Diane Ladd dies at 89 / Photo: KEVIN WINTER - GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

Diane Ladd, the Oscar-nominated "Wild at Heart" actress and mother of Laura Dern, died Monday. She was 89.

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In a career spanning eight decades, Ladd was nominated for the best supporting actress Academy Award three times: in Martin Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," David Lynch's "Wild at Heart," and "Rambling Rose."

The news of Ladd's death was announced by Dern, Ladd's Oscar-winning actress daughter from her first marriage to Bruce Dern.

"My amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother passed with me beside her this morning at her home in Ojai, California," Laura Dern wrote in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

Born in Mississippi in 1935, Southern belle Ladd appeared in many television and stage shows before Scorsese gave her a breakout role as a sassy waitress in 1974's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore."

Lynch cast Ladd to play the murderous, vengeful mother of Dern's Lula in his surreal, Cannes Palme d'Or-winning black comedy "Wild At Heart" in 1990.

Ladd once again shared the screen with her daughter in the following year's "Rambling Rose," a period drama set in the Deep South during the Great Depression.

Ladd's other film credits included "Chinatown" and "Inland Empire."

"She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created," wrote Dern.

"We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now."

No cause of death was provided.

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Pallade Veneta - 'Wild at Heart' actress Diane Ladd dies at 89