Laura Dern Will ‘Not Hide the Process of Aging’ Onscreen

Key takeaways

• Laura Dern talks to AARP about the need for authentic acting roles featuring older characters.
• She thinks that as she’s grown older, she’s come to understand what it really means to be sexy.
• She and her co-star Will Arnett had an intimate scene in the movie Is This Thing On? that director Bradley Cooper thought was steamy (and there was no sex).

Summary

In an interview with AARP, Dern discusses Hollywood’s obsession with youth and its need to develop complex older characters. She’s embracing films that feature roles like these, including her and Will Arnett’s depiction of a mature relationship, a 26-year marriage, that’s at the heart of Is This Thing On?” She also notes that in France, people have a much broader view of what it means to be sexy — and it has nothing to do with age.

The key takeaways and summary were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.

Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Someone told me I was brave for being willing to age on-screen, and you know,
[00:00:05] I’m excited to explore characters and not hide the process of aging, which
[00:00:12] should be empowering and beautiful. I love living in the gray far more today than I did at 20,
[00:00:18] so the complexity of character I’m interested in playing and can play has only expanded.
[00:00:25] In this last film I did, Is This Thing On? Bradley Cooper, our director, was talking about, like, when we were in
[00:00:32] the broken scenes where we were, like, exposing our limited sense of how we
[00:00:38] talked about relationship, we’d end the scene and Bradley was like, “That scene was so sexy,” and I just loved that.
[00:00:45] I loved that this filmmaker saw communication as hot and intimacy
[00:00:54] as erotic, and it only worked because it’s about a marriage of 26 years.
[00:01:01] You know, it’s not about new infatuation. We all know what it’s like to be a kid, but we don’t know how to grow
[00:01:13] old, and we don’t know how to find community around it, and how to talk about our fear of dis-ease, of losing life, of losing loved ones.
[00:01:24] I mean, it’s pretty amazing as a community of storytellers that there are hardly any stories about that, and yet it’s inescapable for us all to face.
[00:01:34] So I hope that we continue to explore male and female characters at every age with
[00:01:41] all the depth they deserve, and inspire young people to be excited to be every
[00:01:46] age instead of embarrassed about it.