Mother of Laura Dern and triple Oscar nominee dies, aged 89
Ladd began his film career on television in the 1950s, when he was in his early 20s. Perry Mason, gun smoke And Big Valleyand continued to work in television for a long time after breaking new ground in cinema. Emergency room, Touched by an Angel And Ray Donovanamong others.
Ladd was connected to the arts through marriage and blood relations. Tennessee Williams was her second cousin, and her first husband, Bruce Dern, was Laura’s father, also an Academy Award-nominated actor.
A native of Laurel, Mississippi, she was born Rose Diane Ladner and seemed destined for prominence. In his memoirs in 2006, Transforming in a Spiral Way in the School of LifeHe recalled his great-grandmother telling him that one day he would stand “in front of the screen” and “direct” his own audience.
By the mid-1970s he had lived well enough to tell his fate. New York Times he no longer denied himself the right to call himself great.
“Shakespeare, Ibsen, British accent, Irish accent, no accent, I can stand on my head, tap dance, sing, look 17 or 70,” he said.
Ladd was married three times and divorced twice, including to Bruce Dern and William A. Shea, Jr. In 1976, when his second marriage ended, he told her: New York Times that neither of their husbands knew “how to show love.”
“I come from the south and I come from my father who gave me the love of a rocking chair. My people pass love around and why I chose two men who needed someone to give love and didn’t know how to give love… I hope I never do this again.”
Ladd’s third marriage, to author and former PepsiCo executive Robert Charles Hunter, lasted from 1999 until his death in August.
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