The 1967 movie that shaped Laura Dern’s approach to acting: “Such an influence on me”
Laura Dern has had her foot firmly planted in the avenues of Hollywood since the 1970s. She knows these streets, these studio lots, like the back of her hand.
The actor was born into a family of stars – her father, Bruce Dern, and her mother, Diane Ladd. It was only a matter of time, then, before she’d make her on-screen debut, and you can see her in 1973’s White Lightning, about six years old, playing the daughter of Ladd’s character. The next year, she had a small cameo in a movie once again, eating ice cream in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, in which her mother also starred.
Evidently, her induction into Hollywood wouldn’t have been possible without her parents, but at least she can safely say that she has always been deeply interested in cinema, studying the greats as she grew up and transferring that skill into some tremendous performances – when she began landing leading roles in the 1980s, like playing the young Connie in Smooth Talk, whose burgeoning sexuality is cruelly taken advantage of by an older man, she demonstrated a vulnerability wise beyond her years.
Clearly, embodying a character with nuance and understanding comes fairly easily to Dern, who inevitably won an Oscar in 2020 for Marriage Story, and while she has looked up to her parents for inspiration, she also cites a wide range of other actors as influences, from James Stewart to Catherine Deneuve.
In fact, it’s Deneuve’s performance in Belle De Jour, Luis Buñuel’s deeply psychological, erotic drama, that has left one of the biggest impacts on her. Released in 1967, the film sees Deneuve – fully decked out in Yves Saint Laurent outfits – reckoning with intense sexual fantasies that cannot be fulfilled by her boring bourgeois life, where, in one sequence, she dreams of being covered in mud and tied up, and these surreal fantasies involving bondage and submission lead her to a high-class brothel, where she hopes to find a sense of satisfaction.
Deneuve, who’d not long played the sexually repressed Carol in Repulsion, is unforgettable as Séverine, bringing such an astounding layer of vulnerability to a challenging part – Dern reflected on her performance during a trip to the Criterion Closet, exclaiming, “Oh my god, this film!”
According to the actor, “she brings innocence to brokenness, and she brings innocence to sexuality in a way I had never seen, and [it] was such an influence on me as an actor.”
Belle De Jour is a timeless classic, a gorgeous vision of depravity mixed with desire, and Deneuve is just perfect as the dissatisfied wife who explores her desires and autonomy through unconventional means – beautifully surreal, the film has also been cited as a significant influence by actors like Charlotte Gainsbourg and Isabelle Huppert.
Dern’s appreciation for the surreal has, of course, manifested in frequent collaborations with David Lynch, from Blue Velvet to Inland Empire, and you can certainly see the influence of such a complex character as Séverine in her depictions of multi-faceted women – something that Dern has always excelled at.
