The daughter of actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, Laura Dern could have just played likable girls next door. With her classical good looks and warm on-screen persona, Dern had everything an actor needs for a successful career. Instead, Dern has challenged herself from the beginning, playing a wide range of characters in every type of movie.
From blockbusters such as Jurassic Park to art films with frequent collaborator David Lynch to television series Enlightened and Big Little Lies, Dern has established herself as one of the most exciting actors of her generation. Find her the definitive roster of the best Laura Dern movies and TV series.
1. Inland Empire (2006)
Since their first movie together, Blue Velvet, Laura Dern and director David Lynch have enjoyed a fruitful and creative relationship. The capstone to that collaboration came with 2006’s Inland Empire, a three-hour absurdist epic and one of Lynch’s most challenging works.
Dern stars as actress Nikki Grace, who loses her handle on reality and gets engrossed in her character Suzie Blue. Inland Empire allows Dern to go big, enhanced by Lynch’s unsettling digital photography. But she shines more in the moments where Nikki/Suzie tries to hold herself together, barely covering her insanity with a veneer of normalcy.
2. Citizen Ruth (1996)
With his debut feature, Citizen Ruth, writer and director Alexander Payne proved himself as a master of dyspeptic comedies. This dark satire about a young woman caught between fanatical pro-choice and pro-life activists cast an unsympathetic eye on Clinton-era politics.
However, it’s Dern’s performance as troubled pregnant woman Ruth Stoops that keeps Citizen Ruth from devolving into a cynical screed. Dern makes no effort to ingratiate Ruth to viewers, but she doesn’t let her remain a flat character either. Instead, she plays Ruth as a woman out for herself alone, unwilling to be a puppet for anyone, not even for the director Payne.
3. Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
More than just a revival of the cult 90s mystery series, Twin Peaks: The Return served as the culmination of David Lynch’s artistic career. He and co-creator Mark Frost brought back many themes and collaborators from Lynch’s previous work, so it surprised no one to see Laura Dern join the cast as Diane, the unseen partner of protagonist FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper.
Rather than just enjoy a victory lap, reunited with a beloved filmmaker to portray a fan-favorite character, Dern turns in a layered, uncomfortable performance. Yet, even at its roughest moments, Dern maintains a soft, wounded heart inside of Diane.
4. Wild at Heart (1990)
Those first learning about Wild at Heart, Nicolas Cage’s sole credit working with David Lynch might assume that he and the other big personalities in the movie, including Willem Dafoe and Crispin Glover, would overshadow Dern. Not only does Dern stand out alongside those characters, but she also crystalizes the film’s uneasy combination of grotesque extremes and deep pathos.
As Lula, the girlfriend to Sailor (Cage) in Lynch’s adaptation of the Barry Gifford novel, Dern most often represents the goodness that other characters either reject or long for. However, that does not prevent her from being just as weird as her co-stars, dancing along with heavy metal music or freaking out while on the run in one of the most memorable Laura Dern movies.
5. Enlightened (2011 – 2013)
As fruitful as her collaborations with David Lynch have been, Dern may have found her most kindred spirit in Mike White, the writer and director of gentle yet cynical comedies such as The Good Girl and White Lotus.
Together, Dern and White created Enlightened, in which she plays a middle-aged woman trying to reenter mainstream life after experiencing a spiritual epiphany following a mental breakdown. Dern knows how to sell the bitterness in the show’s satirical worldview. However, she also brings a level of hope and even kindness to her character Amy, giving viewers hope that she will indeed succeed in her goals.
6. Blue Velvet (1986)
For her first collaboration with David Lynch, Dern played the girl next door, the traditional kind-hearted blond who tries to save the hero (Jeffrey Beaumont, portrayed by Kyle MacLaughlin) in the neo-noir Blue Velvet.
Unlike Wild at Heart, Dern does not make her character Sandy more interesting by getting weird. Rather, she plays the character straight, leaning into the wholesome love that Sandy has for Jeffery. By doing so, Dern heightens the tension of Jeffery’s struggle, making his dalliances with troubled lounge singer Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) and madman Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) much more disturbing. Love it or hate it, Blue Velvet qualifies as one of the most unforgettable Laura Dern movies.
7. Certain Women (2016)
A master of chronicling quiet stories of remarkable people, director Kelly Reichardt casts Dern in the first part of her tryptic Certain Women, based on a series of short stories by Maile Meloy.
Laura Wells, an attorney who cannot help her cheated client (Jared Harris), could be the definitive Dern character. On the surface, Laura has the intelligence and sympathies needed for a labor attorney, as it appears that red tape instead of guilt or incompetence prevents her from winning her client’s case. However, as the story reaches its surprising conclusion, Dern reveals a depth to Laura that defies explanation. Like the other women in Reichardt’s film, Laura has complexities and inconsistencies that make her a compelling figure to watch.
8. Marriage Story (2019)
Most of the action in director Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story focuses on the protracted divorce between Charlie and Nicole Barber (Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson). While Baumbach, as usual, includes humorous observations in the movie, Marriage Story often veers toward the raw and bitter.
So when Dern arrives midway through the film as Nicole’s brass and brazen attorney, Nora Fanshaw, audiences almost turn against her. After all, she not only wants to keep the central couple apart, but she takes joy in helping Nicole defeat Calvin. But as the film progresses, Nora becomes a necessary support for Nicole and a representation of one of the movie’s central themes: in a divorce, there are no good guys or bad guys, just people. Given that she scored an Academy Award for her work, Marriage Story belongs on the must-see list among Laura Dern movies.
9. Smooth Talk (1985)
Even as a young performer, Dern could radiate a maturity beyond her years. Director Joyce Chopra makes good use of that quality in Smooth Talk, an adaptation of the Joyce Carol Oates short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Gone?” by screenwriter Tom Cole. As bratty teen Connie, Dern towers over her co-stars Margaret Welsh and Sara Inglis, underscoring the character’s apparent maturity. But when an older man (Treat Williams) takes an interest in Connie, Dern lets the act slip, reminding viewers that she’s still a kid.
That ability to play both sides of Connie helps Chopra maintain the ambiguity of Oates’s story, leaving the viewer unsettled by the end.
10. Rambling Rose (1991)
Calder Willingham may have written the novel Rambling Rose in 1972, long before Dern became a major star, but it feels like he had her in mind. Rose falls someplace between a woman in trouble from a moralistic 19th-century book and a liberated woman in a story from the 1970s.
Willingham retains that quality in the screenplay he wrote for the 1991 film adaptation, directed by Martha Coolidge. Dern keeps the innocence and allure of Rose, a character who attracts both the curious young man Buddy (Lukas Haas) and the hypocritical father Mr. Hillyer (Robert Duvall). However, Dern and Coolidge never let Rose become a victim, emphasizing an agency that no amount of interested men can diminish.
11. Jurassic Park (1993)
Although she appeared in several hit movies already, Dern hit the big time playing paleontologist Dr. Ellie Sattler in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. The giant dinos may be the main attraction to Jurassic Park, but Dern holds her own as the spunky Sattler.
Whether needling her partner Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), examining a giant pile of triceratops dung, or fighting off velociraptors, Sattler proves that Dern fits in blockbusters as well as she does odd-ball indies.
12. Wild (2014)
In one of Wild’s many flashback scenes, Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) berates her mother Bobbi (Dern) for singing. After listing off the many problems in their lives, including an abusive husband and mounting bills, Cheryl asks, “What part of that don’t you get?” Dern lets Bobbi’s smile drop, but not all the way. “There’s nothing I don’t get,” she assures her daughter, letting Cheryl see the courage behind her goofy song.
Dern’s nuanced take on what could have been a one-dimensional character won her a second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
13. Big Little Lies (2017 – 2019)
At first glance, Dern threatens to disappear among the blonde starlets who populate the HBO series Big Little Lies, based on the novel by Liane Moriarty and created by David E. Kelley. But thanks to her fiery performance as imperious rich mother Renata Klein, no one outshines Dern. Renata’s outsized personality lends itself best to the more soapy aspects of Big Little Lies, particularly the in-fighting between its various well-to-do heroines.
But when director Jean-Marc Vallée wants to make things softer and more subtle, Dern reminds viewers that she has another gear to portray the feet of clay of her larger-than-life character.
14. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Dern almost feels ostentatious when she shows up as the purple-haired Vice-Admiral Holdo in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. After all, the movie already features a new cast of heroes alongside returning characters such as Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Moreover, her quiet and even-keeled rebel leader seems ready at any second to fall to the fiery rogue Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac).
However, that same self-assurance makes Holdo such an intriguing character, a leader who rejects the solitary heroism of most Star Wars movies to underscore the themes of communal resistance. Plus, she gets to initiate one of the franchise’s most jaw-dropping scenes, when she rams a flies through a Star Destroyer at light speed.
15. The Master (2012)
Director Paul Thomas Anderson trains most of his attention in The Master on the gnarled face of lead Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Freddie Quell, a traumatized vet and new follower of cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). When Dern arrives in the film as Helen Sullivan, a former student of Dodd’s, Anderson’s camera cannot help but look toward her.
More than any other character in the film, Sullivan possesses the ability to shatter Dodd’s veneer and reveal the person behind the icon, paving the way for Quell’s eventual downfall.
16. Little Women (2019)
In any other Laura Dern movies, from any other director, Marmee March would be a character beneath an actor of Dern’s stature. The mother of the five girls who make up the titular Little Women in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic, Marmee could be reduced to a worrying wife and doting mom, the dullest of characters reserved for actresses over thirty.
However, Gerwig lets Dern bring out the spry humor in Marmee, a wit necessary to raise women like Jo (Saoirse Ronan) and Amy (Florence Pugh).
17. A Perfect World (1993)
Clint Eastwood’s characters have faced every type of desperate criminal and hard-nosed gunslinger. So when Eastwood’s Texas police chief Red Garnett shoots Dern’s criminologist Sally Gerber a withering look of condescension at the start of A Perfect World, one would expect her to crumble under the weight.
Written by John Lee Hancock and directed by Eastwood, A Perfect World splits attention between Garnett’s old-school cop and escaped convict Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner), who takes 8-year-old Buzz (T. J. Lowther) on the road with him. Instead of buckling, Dern lowers the smile on Sally’s face just enough to reveal a determination that Red did not expect.
18. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982)
Most of the opening scene of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains consists of an unbroken shot of Corrine Burns (Diane Lane), seething with disinterest and contempt for the interviewer grilling her from off-screen. At the end of the interview, Corrine announces that her name is “Third Degree Burns … the lead singer and manager of the Stains.”
From there, Lou Adler cuts to portrait shots of each of the band members, all of whom look in silence at the camera. All except Jessica (Dern), who shouts “Ta-Da!” With that one word, Dern tells viewers everything they need to know about Jessica, a loud and gleeful force of nature who compliments her taciturn sister, Corrine.
19. The Tale (2018)
Written and directed by Jennifer Fox, The Tale might be the most upsetting entry of all Laura Dern movies — a list of credits that includes multiple David Lynch movies (think about that one). Dern portrays Fox, a documentarian whose mother finds a short story that recounts the abuse she sustained at the hands of a riding teacher (Elizabeth Debicki) and her running coach (Jason Ritter). As Jennifer tries to untangle the complicated feelings she still has about the incident, she looks back on her life (in which Isabelle Nélisse portrays her as a child) while still trying to protect herself from others in her life.
At times sharp and angry, and at other times vulnerable and open, Dern captures the trauma that Fox experienced in every forced smile and every desperate defense.
20. The Year of the Dog (2007)
Before making Enlightened, Dern took a supporting part in Mike White’s Year of the Dog, starring Molly Shannon as a retiring middle-aged woman who becomes an animal rights activist. As Bret, the self-absorbed sister-in-law to Shannon’s Peggy, Dern takes the part of a foil to the protagonist.
White gives Dern some of the movie’s best lines, which she delivers with an acerbic wit, saving the kindness in most of her roles for their next collaboration.
21. 99 Homes (2014)
Despite its trenchant depiction of the Great Recession of the 2010s, director Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes went unnoticed by most audiences. Written by Bahrani and Amir Naderi, 99 Homes tells the story of out-of-work construction worker Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), who gets involved with high-powered realtor Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) after the latter evicts Dennis from his family home.
As Dennis’s widowed mother Lynn, Dern doesn’t have the most exciting part to play. However, she embodies an embattled working-class person, helping to remind viewers of those harmed by people like Rick, something that Dennis sometimes forgets.
22. October Sky (1999)
Few filmmakers can do sentimental nostalgia like Joe Johnston, director of the coming-of-age drama October Sky. Johnston has the perfect subject in Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Homer Hickman, a teen from 1950s West Virginia who takes an interest in rockets after learning about Sputnik from his teacher, Miss Riley (Dern).
Working from a screenplay by Lewis Colick, who adapts the memoir by the real Homer Hickman, Johnston bathes the screen in warm oranges and reds, mirroring the tones of a Norman Rockwell painting. Within that world, Dern shines as the kind and inspiring teacher, a stock character that Dern imbues with wholesome warmth.
23. Wilson (2017)
Based on the comic book by alternative artist Daniel Clowes, Wilson stars Woody Harrelson as the titular character, the most annoying man who ever lived. Oblivious to how his extreme introversion affects others, Wilson finds his ex-wife Pippi (Dern), a former drug addict and street walker, who claims to have sent the child that he fathered to an adoption agency. Upon reconnecting, Wilson learns that Pippi has been raising their child alone and the trio try to make a family together.
Even more than Harrelson, who plays Wilson as a good-hearted but obnoxious boor, Dern must carry the themes of the movie, portraying a woman who fools herself into wanting a nuclear family.
24. Novocaine (2001)
Writer and director David Atkins doesn’t completely land the black comedy tone that his film Novocaine needs, but it’s not for a lack of trying on the cast’s part. Star Steve Martin recalls his part in Little Shop of Horrors to play a dull dentist who enters a world of crime after falling for a patient/femme fatale (Helena Bonham Carter).
At first, Dern seems to repeat the beats of Blue Velvet, playing her character Jean as a good blond girl who tries to keep Martin’s Dr. Sangster. However, Atkins’s story goes to unexpected places, letting Dern reveal the madwoman beneath her character’s wholesome good looks.
The post Laura Dern’s Best Movies and TV Shows first appeared on Wealth of Geeks.
