3-time Oscar nominee Diane Ladd dead at 89

The Associated Press

· Posted: Nov 03, 2025 4:48 PM EST | Last Updated: November 3

Diane Ladd, the three-time Academy Award nominee whose roles ranged from the brash waitress successful Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore to the scheming genitor successful Wild astatine Heart, has died astatine 89.

Ladd's decease was announced Monday by girl Laura Dern, who issued a connection saying her parent and occasional co-star had died astatine her location successful Ojai, Calif., with Dern astatine her side.

Dern, who called Ladd her "amazing hero" and "profound acquisition of a mother," did not instantly mention a origin of death.

"She was the top daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, creator and empathetic tone that lone dreams could person seemingly created," Dern wrote. "We were blessed to person her. She is flying with her angels now."

From left, Diane Ladd, Bruce Dern and Laura Dern airs aft each received stars connected the Hollywood Walk of Fame successful Los Angeles, connected Nov. 1, 2010. (Matt Sayles/The Associated Press)

A beingness successful the arts

A talented comic and melodramatic performer, Ladd had a agelong vocation successful tv and connected signifier earlier breaking done arsenic a movie performer successful Martin Scorsese's 1974 merchandise Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. She earned an Oscar information for supporting histrion for her crook arsenic the acerbic, straight-talking Flo, and went connected to look successful dozens of movies implicit the pursuing decades.

Her galore credits included Chinatown, Primary Colors and 2 different movies for which she received champion supporting nods, Wild astatine Heart and Rambling Rose, some of which co-starred her daughter.

She besides continued to enactment successful television, with appearances connected ER, Touched by Angel and Alice, the spinoff from Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, among others.

Through matrimony and humor relations, Ladd was tied to the arts. Tennessee Williams was a 2nd relative and archetypal husband, Bruce Dern, Laura's father, was himself an Academy Award nominee. Ladd and Laura Dern achieved the uncommon feat of mother-and-daughter nominees for their enactment successful Rambling Rose.

A autochthonal of Laurel, Miss., Ladd was seemingly destined to basal out. In her 2006 memoir, Spiraling Through the School of Life, she remembered being told by her great-grandmother that she would 1 time beryllium successful "front of a screen" and would "command" her ain audiences.

By the mid-1970s, she had lived retired her destiny good capable to archer the New York Times that she nary longer denied herself the close to telephone herself great.

"Now I don't accidental that," she said. "I tin bash Shakespeare, Ibsen, English accents, Irish accents, nary accent, basal connected my head, pat dance, sing, look 17 oregon look 70."