Legendary Actor Diane Ladd Dies at 89

Diane Ladd, the three-time Academy Award nominee whose roles ranged from the brash waitress in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore to the protective mother in “Wild at Heart,” has died at 89.​

Ladd’s death was announced Monday by daughter Laura Dern, who issued a statement saying her mother and occasional co-star had died at her home in Ojai, California, with Dern at her side. Dern, who called Ladd her “amazing hero” and “profound gift of a mother,′ did not immediately cite a cause of death.​

“She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created,” Dern wrote. “We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now.”​

In 2023, AARP interviewed Ladd and Dern about their book, Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding). The impetus for the book was a scary diagnosis that Ladd had received after she started having trouble breathing. A doctor said her lungs were so compromised that she might have just six months to live. To build up her mom’s lungs, Dern walked daily with Ladd and recorded their conversations, which became the core of the book.​

Ladd and her daughter Laura Dern attend AARP's 19th Annual Movies For Grownups Awards in January 2020.

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Ladd was also a 2016 Movies for Grownups with AARP supporting-actress winner for her work in the film Joy.

“They say I’m the heart and soul of that movie because I try to inspire people to fight for what they believe in,” Ladd said at the time. “I guess that describes the real me, too!”

A gifted comic and dramatic performer, Ladd had a long career in television and on stage before breaking through as a film performer in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 release Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. She earned an Oscar nomination for supporting actor for her turn as the acerbic, straight-talking Flo, and went on to appears in dozens of movies over the following decades. Her many credits included Chinatown, Primary Colors and two other movies for which she received best-supporting nods, Wild at Heart and Rambling Rose, both of which co-starred her daughter. She also continued to work in television, with appearances in ER, Touched by an Angel and Alice, the spinoff from Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, among others.​

Kris Kristofferson and Ladd in 1974's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." Ladd received her first Oscar nomination for her work on the film.

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Through marriage and blood relations, Ladd was tied to the arts. Tennessee Williams was a second cousin and first husband Bruce Dern, Laura’s father, was himself an Academy Award nominee. Ladd and Laura Dern achieved the rare feat of mother-and-daughter nominees for their work in Rambling Rose.​