Diane Ladd won three Academy awards and had a career in film and television which spanned more than half a century. Photograph: AP
Born November 29th, 1935
Died November 3rd, 2025
Diane Ladd – three times an Academy Award nominee – who has died aged 89, was a dynamic presence on stage, screen and television for more than half a century.
In film roles ranging from a biker chick in The Wild Angels (1966) to the sassy waitress of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) and the monster mother in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990), Ladd always made an impact.
She starred in the last of these with her daughter Laura Dern, one of several mother-daughter relationships they portrayed on screen. Their Oscar nominations for the 1991 film Rambling Rose made Academy Award history as a unique mother-daughter double.
She was born Rose Diane Lanier in Meridian, Mississippi. Her father, Paul, was a vet and her mother, Mary (nee Anderson), an actor.
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