Legendary actress Diane Ladd has died. She was 89.
The three-time Academy Award-nominated actress passed away this morning according to a statement from her daughter, the iconic actress Laura Dern.
“My amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother, Diane Ladd, passed with me beside her this morning, at her home in Ojai, California,” Dern told the Hollywood Reporter. “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 is one of the greatest actresses of her era, with three Oscar nominations for her roles in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart and Martha Coolidge’s Rambling Rose.
Show business ran in the family with Ladd: she was married to Bruce Dern for nine years and was a second cousin of Tennessee Williams. She made her film debut with the 1966 film The Wild Angels, and her career quickly picked up steam thanks to memorable roles in films like White Lightning and Chinatown.
It was 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore that really established her as a powerhouse, though. Ellen Burstyn may have played the title character, but Ladd’s role as the sassy waitress Flo is the most memorable part of the movie thanks to her ad-libbed comedic lines like “I could lay under you, eat fried chicken and do a crossword puzzle at the same time, that’s how much you bother me.”
Her role was so popular that when the movie was adapted into a sitcom (titled Alice), the producers hired another actress to play Flo, but were eventually forced to bring in Ladd anyway as another waitress named Belle Dupree. She won a Golden Globe for the role.
Other roles she had include National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Something Wicked This Way Comes, All Night Long, Black Widow, 28 Days, Joy, A Kiss Before Dying, and more.
She was fortunate enough to act alongside her daughter often. In addition to her three Oscar-nominated roles, all of which also starred her daughter in some capacity, the two also appeared together in 1996’s Citizen Ruth, 2001’s Daddy and Them and David Lynch’s final film Inland Empire in 2006. Plus, the two starred as mother and daughter in the cult classic HBO comedy Enlightened.
She is survived by her daughter and her two grandchildren.
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