Diane Ladd, Three-Time Oscar Nominee & Laura Dern's Mom, Dies at 89
In her final Instagram post, the fiery southern belle had hinted at a podcasting venture
November 3, 2025
Diane Ladd, a prolific actor on the stage, TV and film who also frequently worked with her daughter Laura Dern, died November 3. She was 89.
Dern confirmed the news to People, writing in a statement:
“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. She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created. We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now.”
Ladd and Dern made Oscar history in 1992, the first mother-daughter duo to be nominated for acting Oscars in the same year (both for 1991’s Rambling Rose).
They had also teamed up for Wild at Heart (1990), Citizen Ruth (1996), Inland Empire (2006) and the TV series Enlightened (2011-2013).
Dern’s father is Ladd’s ex-husband Bruce Dern, 89, to whom she was wed from 1960-1969. Their other daughter died as a toddler in a tragic accident, something Ladd spoke of with great pain, going so far as to say it is what drove her and her husband apart.
Regardless, Ladd and her ex remained friendly, and appeared together with their surviving daughter for a 2010 Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony — the first to accommodate a family by places three stars in close proximity.
Ladd, who was known to play spicy southern women with depth and understanding, was born November 29, 1935, in Laurel, Mississippi.
She made quite a few early-TV appearances, including on the shows Decoy (1957), The Big Story (1958), 77 Sunset Strip (1963) and Perry Mason (1963), before making her credited feature-film debut in The Wild Angels (1966).
Her next big break was as a regular on the soap The Secret Storm (1971), but far greater heights were around the corner.
In 1974, she made the most of a meaty role in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) and secured her first of three Oscar nominations for her work as Flo in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
When the latter went to series as Alice (1976-1985), Ladd watched her character become a pop-culture sensation thanks to a brassy performance by Polly Holliday (who also just died this year). She wound up joining Alice for the 1980-1981 season as new character Belle, but was in turn replaced by Celia Weston — who is now the only major or minor character alive from the series.
Ladd was always very active making TV guest appearances. Her feature-film work includes All Night Long (1981), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), Black Widow (1987), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Primary Colors (1998) and 28 Days (2000).
In 1992, she acted with her own real-life mom, Mary Lanier (who died in 2002), in Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me.
Ladd was also powerful on Broadway, earning praise for her 1968 debut, Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights, and was a survivor of Shelley Winters’s Broadway effort One Night Stands of a Noisy Passenger (1970).
When she published her memoir Spiraling Through the School of Life in 2006, she was so proud of it she would give it the old hard-sell at autograph shows. Many who came for a signed Alice still left with that book.
Ladd is survived by her daughter. She was preceded in death this year by her husband of 25 years.⚡️