Laura Dern: Jurassic Spark
There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays,” Raymond Chandler wrote in The Long Goodbye back in 1953. A tough guy who knew a thing or two about both women and Los Angeles, Chandler went on at great length to identify various subspecies of blondes. Just to name a few, there’s “the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue stare” and “the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne,” as well as “the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head.”
The book on Laura Dern’s bed table these days isn’t anything by Chandler – it’s Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, which despite the title is not an actress’s primer on how to deal with Hollywood agents but rather a tome of significantly more general interest for the Jungian at heart. Still, there’s little doubt that if Dern put her mind to it, this gifted twenty-six-year-old actress could play just about any blonde that Chandler could dream up. Well, maybe Dern is a little too tall a drink of water to be “the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters.” But from temptress to madonna, including some compelling stops in between, Dern has pretty much played ’em all.
She was a tormented teen lamb heading toward adult sexual slaughter in the form of Treat Williams in Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk. In Peter Bogdanovich’s Mask, she was the angelic blind beauty who brings romance to Eric Stoltz’s deformed character. And in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, she provided the picture’s token dose of smalltown purity. Then, suddenly, innocence and Dern parted company, at least onscreen. In Lynch’s ultrakinky road picture from hell, Wild at Heart, Dern kicked out the jams as Lula, the ultimate lusty love thang to Nicolas Cage’s like-minded Sailor. And in Martha Coolidge’s Rambling Rose, she gave a remarkable Oscar-nominated performance as the title character, arguably the most appealing nymphomaniac in all of screen history. It’s hard to forget the scene of Dern in bed with the young Lukas Haas, conjuring up a convincing orgasm and teaching the young man some invaluable lessons in ways of love.
This summer Dern’s back on the big screen as Dr. Ellie Sattler, a paleobotanist, okay, a blond paleobotanist. Dr. Sattler is the woman who runs with dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s new tyrannosaur-size epic that’s widely predicted to trample the competition at the box office.
“No,” Dern says emphatically, but with a smile. “There’s absolutely no scene in Jurassic Park of me in bed with a young dinosaur helping him lose his sexual innocence.”
UNLIKE THE DINOSAUR – with the possible exception of Barney – Laura Dern continues to walk the earth. But today, she’s driving her black BMW up Doheny in Beverly Hills and looking lovely in a classy little flower-print number. The beemer’s immaculate, and there’s a fine Aretha Franklin tape in her deck. Bright, warm and given to the occasional shocking squeal and uncanny Lucille Ball imitation, Dern gives a tour of the town like the true child of Hollywood that she is.
“My grandmother used to live right there,” Dern says, pointing excitedly at one nearby apartment building. “And I grew up for a few years in a place over there. And right over there at Carl’s Market – thank you very much – I actually spotted Gilligan in the parking lot when I was nine years old. Imagine meeting Bob Denver – now that was pretty mind-blowing stuff. And I’m pretty sure that Marilyn Monroe died in this building up here on the right.”
An angular beauty with a distinctly unbimboish appeal, Dern never rips off her shirt as we ride along the roads like the wild-at-heart Lula might have done – though she does say, promisingly, that “Lula will always be with me.” Nor does she ever use her considerable sexuality to win our friendship – a tactic to which dear old Rambling Rose would’ve almost definitely resorted. Still, Dern is wacky, fun company for such a serious actress, and as Chandler might have seen fit to mention, she’s the sort of blonde who’s real easy on the eyes.
The self-deprecating Dern agrees to consider the nature of her strong appeal to men only when she’s severely pressed. “I was raised by Southern women,” she says shyly. “So I guess there’s that wonderful air of flirtation that’s more about liking people than necessarily wanting to go to bed with them.”
In addition to all these admirable personal qualities, Dern is also, by the way, one of the best actresses of her generation. Certainly she’s got the bloodlines for it.Her parents – who divorced before she turned two – are both major actors and major characters in their own right. Her father is Bruce Dern, a talented and intense character actor noted for playing bad guys in everything from The Wild Angels to Diggstown. Her mother, Diane Ladd – with whom she lived as a child after the split – is a respected actress best known for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and for acting alongside her daughter in Wild at Heart and Rambling Rose, the latter of which resulted in unprecedented mother-daughter Oscar nominations.