Laura Dern has been blessing us with her existence for 55 years. The Oscar-winning actress started young, being the daughter of two screen titans in their own right – Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. Indeed, one of her earliest big-screen roles was by her mother's side in Martin Scorsese's 1974 Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Since then, Dern has flourished into one of American cinema's most important modern performers. Often driven to auteurs with bold visions, she's a director's actress whose commitment to her roles is never in question. She's never in danger of dispassionate acting, giving it her all 100% of the time and often twisting her visage into terrifying extremes. She really is 'The Face.'
To celebrate the occasion, a list of favorite Laura Dern film performances…
SMOOTH TALK (1986)
Joyce Chopra's adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates' short story portrays a hormonal teen as she discovers her sexuality as well as men's sexual cruelty. Dern perfectly embodies the protagonist, often acting as a child yearning for adulthood, bullishly abrasive, brattish, and immature. This is no polished look at adolescence but a complex exercise in clear-eyed frankness. Still, what most impresses is the tense centerpiece, a twisted prelude to rape that might be one of the most suspenseful scenes ever shot. Dern nails the uncomfortable register, never idealizing her character nor flattening her pain, her pride, her doom.
Smooth Talk is streaming on the Criterion Channel.
BLUE VELVET (1986)
Without a shadow of a doubt, David Lynch is Laura Dern's best director. No other filmmaker better understands how to capitalize on her nervous screen presence, lanky physicality, and expressionistic face. Before he had her go mad as hell, the auteur had Dern portray Blue Velvet's pinnacle of old-fashioned American innocence, a lamb ready for slaughter by way of shock. Preternaturally wise and unfailingly good, Dern's Sandy starts as an exercise in nuance, making a beatific ideal into a real person. As the film goes on, however, the actress gets to break down into a shattered vision of teen terror, her face sculpted into a screaming mask, Munch's famous painting come to life.
Blue Velvet is streaming on the Amazon MGM Channel.
WILD AT HEART (1990)
As the title indicates, Wild at Heart finds Lynch and Dern at their wildest. Far from being my favorite of their collaborations, this Palme d'Or winner ends up being rather undisciplined, percolating Oz references and vivid sexuality until all that's left is an amorphous mess. However, Dern is on fire at all times, delivering a lustful tour de force, as unhinged as it is inspired. More than playing a person, the actress constructs the impression of passion denuded of all pretension or decorum, an explosion of pure feeling with nothing standing between the camera and her character's raw interiority.
Wild at Heart isn't streaming anywhere at the moment. However, you can find it on Blu-Ray and DVD.
JURASSIC PARK (1993)
By 1993, Dern's talent as a dramatic actress was well-known, but her action heroin potential was still unexplored. That is until Steven Spielberg saw something no one else had previously found in Dern's screen work. As it turns out, she's a perfect fit for effects-heavy action cinema, finding a fitting home for her actorly bigness. In a narrative full of gigantic reptiles, nothing ever feels as monumental as Dern's facial plasticity, her open expressions, and earthy allure. What's more, she doesn't let movie star charisma stand in the way of projecting intelligence – a key element when portraying an intrepid scientist.
Jurassic Park is streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Club Illico.
CITIZEN RUTH (1996)
Like Wild at Heart, Citizen Ruth is another well-loved 90s classic for which I have little affection. However, Dern's work as a drug addict who finds herself turned into a symbol in the American war for and against abortion is unimpeachable. As always, the actress is fantastic at going big, devouring Alexander Payne's satirical script and leaving no crumbs. More than anyone else in the film, she's capable of finding the comedy in the premise without losing bite or psychological complexity. Full of scorn and witless hunger, Ruth is a dynamite screen creation. Dern aces the verbal and physical aspects of the humor, throwing herself into the ugliest depths of her anti-heroin while remaining eminently watchable.
Citizen Ruth is streaming on The Criterion Channel.
DR. T & THE WOMEN (2000)
One of Robert Altmans' worst failures, Dr. T & the Women is not without its charms. The female cast is wonderfully colorful, and so are the costumes in their rainbow cornucopia of early-2000s gaudiness. Dern exemplifies both qualities, giving the picture's most colorful performance while also wearing its zaniest fits. Always stealing the spotlight from the margins of scenes, her take on the sister-in-law of a Texas gynecologist is a screwy delight. What's more, if you watch the movie just for her, you can skip the lunatic ending that nearly ruins the whole project.
Dr. T & the Women is streaming on Hoopla, Tubi, CTV, and Plex.
INLAND EMPIRE (2006)
What more can be said about Inland Empire? David Lynch's wildest feature is a perfect showcase for Laura Dern at her most deranged. Losing herself in an out-of-control spiral of metatextual cinema and unclassifiable horror, the actress seems to explode and implode at the same time. Hers is a deconstruction of the very essence of movie acting, a mugging disintegration of reason until all that's left is a series of broad gestures and even broader expressions. A woman possessed by her director's vision, Dern's character, perchance the performer herself, seems in a deep trance, both in fascination and disgust at cinema's intrinsic fakeness. It's a nightmare of a performance. It's a miracle too.
Inland Empire isn't streaming anywhere at the moment. However, you can find it on Blu-Ray and DVD.
THE MASTER (2012)
From my ranking of the unheralded performances in PTA's filmography:
"Dern gets to show a tremendous evolution as her character goes from proselytizing believer to a woman wracked with doubt. At first, Helen Sullivan shares the word of Lancaster Dodd with feverish devotion, her speech airy, her voice a whispery prayer even when talking normally. But then, the second book arrives, full of contradictions and betrayals. Asking her idol questions, she gets screams and admonitions as the response. In that last scene, Dern elaborates a journey, light questioning that turns into terror. Finally, she leaves with a look of brokenness, a shadow over those eyes that once shone with blind faith."
The Master is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS (2014)
As you might have noticed, the Academy and I are out of step when it comes to recognizing Laura Dern's greatness. What the movie industry chooses to honor is what I consider to be her lesser work. If not her worst performances, then some of her least essential. This was evident in 2014 when she played two stalwart mothers and got an Oscar nomination for the wrong one. Don't get me wrong, her work in Wild is commendable, but it's also safely slotted in an inspirational matriarch model with a tinge of saccharine tragedy. The Fault in Our Stars is a much worse film. Though, perhaps because of that, Dern ends up taking a more daring approach to her role. As the mother of dying youth in this teen cancer drama cum romance, she manages the rare feat of making the supportive parent much more fascinating than her brood. She's a woman full of contradicting impulses, controlled by a prerogative of performative joy while her heart is breaking a little more each second that passes. That's what we call stealing a movie!
The Fault in Our Stars in streaming on Disney+.
THE TALE (2018)
After its Sundance premiere, Jennifer Fox's The Tale got bought out by HBO and taken out of Oscar consideration. That's a pity since the movie might have given Dern the possibility of a fully-earned Academy Awards honor, at long last. Playing a woman coming to terms with a history of childhood sexual abuse, Dern delivers one of her most interiorized performances. For a thespian who tends to go big as default, there's incredible restraint here, an unwillingness to cheapen the material by falling into the temptation of showing off. Avoiding melodrama, she thus creates a challenging vision of survival, the sweet ambrosia of ignorance, and the pain of facing the truth.
The Tale is streaming on Crave. You can also rent it on Google Play, Microsoft Store, and Youtube.
What about you, dear reader? What are your favorite Laura Dern performances?