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Diane Ladd, 3-time Oscar nominee, dies at 89

OJAI, Calif. — Diane Ladd, a three-time Academy Award nominee and actor of rare timing and intensity whose roles ranged from the brash waitress in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” to the scheming parent in “Wild at Heart,” has died at 89.

Ladd’s death was announced Monday by daughter Laura Dern, who issued a statement saying her mother and occasional co-star had died at her home in Ojai, California, with Dern at her side. Dern, who called Ladd her “amazing hero” and “profound gift of a mother,’ did not immediately cite a cause of death.

“She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created,” Dern wrote. “We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now.”

A gifted comic and dramatic performer, Ladd had a long career in television and on stage before breaking through as a film performer in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 release “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” She earned an Oscar nomination for supporting actor for her turn as the acerbic, straight-talking Flo, and went on to appears in dozens of movies over the following decades. Her many credits included “Chinatown,” “Primary Colors” and two other movies for which she received best supporting nods, “Wild at Heart” and “Rambling Rose,” both of which co-starred her daughter. She also continued to work in television, with appearances in “ER,” “Touched by Angel” and “Alice,” the spinoff from “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” among others.

Through marriage and blood relations, Ladd was tied to the arts. Tennessee Williams was a second cousin and first husband Bruce Dern, Laura’s father, was himself an Academy Award nominee. Ladd and Laura Dern achieved the rare feat of mother-and-daughter nominees for their work in “Rambling Rose” and they also were memorably paired in “Wild at Heart,” a personal favorite of Ladd’s and winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. In the dark, farcical David Lynch noir, her character, Marietta, is willing to try anything — including murder — to keep her daughter (Laura Dern) away from her ex-con lover, played by Nicolas Cage. Ladd would be called upon by the director for some Lynchian touches, and countered with some of her own.

A native of Laurel, Mississippi, Ladd was born Rose Diane Ladner and was apparently destined to stand out. In her 2006 memoir, “Spiraling Through the School of Life,” she remembered being told by her great-grandmother that she would one day in “front of a screen” and would “command” her own audiences.

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