Diane Ladd Wanted Laura Dern to Quit Acting to Be a Doctor or Lawyer

Laura Dern almost lived out her role in Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical divorce drama “Marriage Story.”

Dern, who won the Academy Award for her turn in the 2019 film, revealed that her mother, actress Diane Ladd, was determined to encourage Dern to become a lawyer instead of pursuing a film career. Dern, whose father is Bruce Dern, began acting as a child and played an extra alongside Ladd in Martin Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.”

“I fell in love with it,” Dern said during “Live With Kelly & Mark” (via Entertainment Weekly). “Scorsese let me be an extra, sitting at the counter watching these amazing artists work together.”

Ladd added during the talk show appearance, “I said no. I dissuaded her. I said, ‘No, honey, no, no, no.’ Look, be a lawyer, be a doctor. I said, ‘If you’re going to save somebody’s life as a doctor, nobody’s going to care if your chin points when you cry or your butt is too big.'”

Ladd continued, “She fooled me. She said, ‘Oh, mommy, you encourage everybody, you say [to] use the gifts God gave you,’ and she said, ‘If God gave me a gift, let me use it now, I’ll be so bored with it later I won’t even want to do that.'”

Ladd and Dern collaborated on joint memoir “Honey, Baby, Mine,” detailing their relationship and respective Hollywood legacies. They’ve starred together in movies including “Wild at Heart” and series including “Enlightened.”

Dern previously gushed about growing up with her parents in the spotlight, saying during her Oscars acceptance speech, “Some people say, ‘Never meet your heroes.’ But sometimes if you’re blessed, you get them as your parents.”

And “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” helmer Scorsese was key to encouraging Dern to further pursue acting.

“When I was in my late teens, he called me. And it meant the world to me, and I’m so lucky that I got to tell him this,” Dern said. “He said ‘I’ve been watching what you’re doing, you’re doing what filmmakers do, this is the right thing.’ I asked what that was, and he said — ‘You’re building a body of work. Keep going. Keep striving. Dive deeper, keep reinventing.’”