Diane Ladd

 

Ladd was born Rose Diane Ladner, the only child of Mary Bernadette Ladner (née Anderson), a housewife and actress, and Preston Paul Ladner, a veterinarian who sold products for poultry and livestock.^[1][2][3][4] She was born in Laurel, Mississippi on November 29, 1935, while the family was visiting relatives for Thanksgiving, though they lived in Meridian, Mississippi.^[1][5] Ladd is related to playwright Tennessee Williams^[6] and poet Sidney Lanier.^[7] Ladd was raised in her mother's Catholic faith.^[8][9]

Ladd was married to actor and one-time co-star Bruce Dern from 1960 to 1969. They had two daughters, Diane Elizabeth, who died at age eighteen months after a drowning accident, and Laura Elizabeth, who became an actress.^[10][11] Ladd and Laura Dern co-starred in the films, Wild at Heart, Rambling Rose, Citizen Ruth and Inland Empire, and in the HBO series Enlightened. The two also appeared together in White Lightning and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, although Laura was uncredited in both.

Ladd was previously married to William A. Shea Jr. from 1969 to 1977. She married her current husband, Robert Charles Hunter, in 1999.^[10] Ladd was supportive of Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign.^[12]

In 2018, Ladd was misdiagnosed with pneumonia and given six months to a year to live after she inhaled "poison spray" from the farms neighboring her home, constricting her esophagus.^[13] Her daughter, Laura, transferred her to another hospital where she made a full recovery.^[14]

In 1971, Ladd joined the cast of the CBS soap opera The Secret Storm. She was the second actress to play the role of Kitty Styles on the long-running daytime serial. She later had a supporting role in Roman Polanski's 1974 film Chinatown, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role as Flo in the film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. That film inspired the television series Alice, in which Flo was portrayed by Polly Holliday. When Holliday left the TV series, Ladd succeeded her as waitress Isabelle "Belle" Dupree.

 

Her subsequent film appearances include Black Widow (1987), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Primary Colors (1998), 28 Days (2000), and Joy (2015). She appeared in the independent screwball comedy Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me in 1992, where she played a flirty, aging Southern belle alongside her real mother, actress Mary Lanier.^[15]

 

In 2004, Ladd played psychic Mrs. Druse in the television miniseries of Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital. In April 2006, Ladd released her first book, Spiraling Through The School of Life: A Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Discovery. In 2007, she co-starred in the Lifetime Television film Montana Sky.

In addition to her Academy Award nomination for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, she was also nominated (again in the Best Actress in a Supporting Role category) for both Wild at Heart and Rambling Rose, both of which she starred alongside her daughter Laura Dern. Dern received a nomination for Best Actress for Rambling Rose. The dual mother and daughter nominations for Ladd and Dern in Rambling Rose marked the first time in Academy Awards history that such an event had occurred. They were also nominated for dual Golden Globe Awards in the same year.

Ladd has also worked in theatre. She made her Broadway debut in Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights in 1968. In 1976, she starred in A Texas Trilogy: Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander, for which she received a Drama Desk Award nomination.^[16]

On November 1, 2010, Ladd, Laura Dern, and Bruce Dern received adjoining stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; this is the first time family members have been given such consideration on the Walk. Ladd's star is the 2,421st.

She starred in the Hallmark Channel series Chesapeake Shores.^[17]

• Ladd, Diane (2006). Spiraling Through the School of Life: A Mental, Physical, And Spiritual Discovery. Hay House Inc. ISBN 978-1-401-90719-8.
• Ladd, Diane (2016). A Bad Afternoon for a Piece of Cake. Exxcell Press. ISBN 978-0-981-79206-4.
• Dern, Laura; Ladd, Diane (2023). Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding). Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 978-1-538-72037-0.

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Diane Ladd.

• Diane Ladd at IMDb
• Diane Ladd at AllMovie
• Diane Ladd at Rotten Tomatoes
• Diane Ladd at the TCM Movie Database  
• Diane Ladd at the Internet Broadway Database
• Diane Ladd at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Diane Ladd at Playbill Vault
• Diane Ladd biography; revised August 10, 2024