While listening to your parents’ advice is always advisable, sometimes it’s best to follow your own path.
While promoting their new book, Honey, Baby, Mine, Diane Ladd and Laura Dern spoke about Ladd’s dreams for her daughter and how they initially didn’t involve Dern following in the footsteps of her famous parents.
“I said no,” Ladd said. “I dissuaded her. I said, ‘No, honey, no, no, no.’ Look, be a lawyer, be a doctor.”
But once Dern got a taste of what it would be like to be an actor, she couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
“I fell in love with it,” Dern on Live With Kelly & Mark Tuesday. “Scorsese let me be an extra, sitting at the counter watching these amazing artists work together.”
The 56-year-old actress played an extra in her mother’s Martin Scorsese-directed 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
It wasn’t long after her debut as an extra that Dern told her mother she would like to pursue a career in acting.
Ladd, an award-winning actress who has appeared in 120 film and television roles, did everything in her power to dissuade her daughter from being an actress.
“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.’ 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.'”
Unfortunately for Ladd she didn’t get her wish as her daughter went on to become an award-winning actor.
Although you could say both mother and daughter got their wishes because in 2020 Dern won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing a divorce lawyer in Marriage Story.
Imagine if Laura Dern took her mother’s advice and studied to become a doctor or a lawyer…
I bet a lot of people have a similar story where their parents wanted them to be something, but they chose a different path. I believe you should do whatever makes you happy!
