“She blew my mind”: the 1990 movie that was a “wish come true” for Laura Dern
Laura Dern is easily one of the most talented stars of her generation. She might have won an Oscar for her supporting role in Marriage Story, but that’s only scraping the surface of her genius, which has extended across blockbusters like Jurassic Park and incredible TV such as Big Little Lies.
But for many of us, Dern will always be a Lynchian icon. She collaborated with David Lynch several times in her career, beginning in 1986 when she appeared in Blue Velvet alongside Kyle MacLachlan. By the time the surrealist filmmaker was ready to make his next movie, which fell amid the popularity of his era-defining series Twin Peaks, he called Dern straight back up.
While Dern would come to give one of her most incredible performances directed by Lynch in 2006’s Inland Empire, in which she played a woman who loses her grip on reality, it’s her role in 1990’s Wild at Heart that is perhaps her most beloved out of the lot. Much more accessible than Lynch’s final feature, Wild at Heart is still just as bizarre at its core, with its campy tone and blend of road trip romance, with a heavy dose of violence sprinkled on top.
Dern played Lula alongside Nicolas Cage as Sailor, her lover. The pair have great chemistry, and it’s hard to imagine any other actors who could step into the shoes of these characters as perfectly. Yet, the real dream come true wasn’t working with Lynch again, or Cage, but getting to star alongside her mother.
Born to actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, the latter would often appear in the same movies as her daughter, but Wild at Heart marked their first collaboration (unless you count Dern’s ice-cream-eating cameo in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore when she was seven). Naturally, Ladd portrayed her mother, Marietta Fortune, although they weren’t exactly playing happy families.
Lynch’s film sees Marietta hire a hitman to chase down Sailor following his release from prison, but we see her increasingly descend into derangement over the course of the film, like when she covers her entire face in red lipstick. It’s unforgettable.
Talking to Interview Magazine, the actor revealed her delight at starring in the same film as her mother. “It’s always been a desire of mine to work with my parents, so this was a wish come true,” she said. “It’s comfortable to be on a set with her – I’m used to that, but she blew my mind when I saw the movie. We were in so many scenes, separate from each other, neither of us knew what the other was doing.”
The pair would go on to collaborate with each other many times over the course of the coming years, with Ladd and Dern making Oscars history when they became the first mother-daughter duo to be nominated for their performances in the same film following their roles in the 1991 movie Rambling Rose.
Ladd would play Dern’s mother once again in Daddy and Them in 2001, while also taking on the matriarchal role in Dern’s comedy-drama series Enlightened a decade later. Clearly, the pair loved sharing the screen with one another, but interestingly, it took until 2024’s Palm Royale for Dern to star alongside her father, something she similarly called “such a dream come true”.
