Everything about Laura Dern looks reassuringly
expensive: the bouncy hair, polka-dot blouse, perfect
make-up, plus a piano in the background. I long for her to
slip into her character from Big Little Lies and hiss that
fabulous line: “I will not not be rich.”
In the HBO series about Monterey’s overprivileged,
overburdened mums, Dern plays Renata Klein, a whip-
smart businesswoman whose husband loses their
fortune and screws the nanny. Her A-list co-stars, Nicole
Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Meryl Streep, are
predictably good, but it is Dern’s raging speeches —
“I will be rich again. I will rise up. I will
buy a f ***ing polar bear for every kid in
this school. And then I will squish you
like the bug that you are” — that are the
acting masterclasses.
The role, which Dern says was “deli-
cious fun”, won her an Emmy in 2017 and
a Golden Globe in 2018, while her
portrayal of a cut-throat Hollywood
divorce lawyer in Noah Baumbach’s
Marriage Story scooped her an Oscar for
best supporting actress last year. Over
a video call, I scan her Los Angeles living
room for the statuette.
“Well, you can’t spot it on the piano, but you would
never have been able to see it [at all] till my daughter and
Reese Witherspoon moved it so that now, if you go
throughout my house, you can definitely spot it some-
where,” Dern says, somewhat cagily. “[My Oscar] is
spottable because — and this was really interesting — the
women in my life said, ‘No, don’t hide celebration. You
honour it for yourself. This isn’t you touting it around the
streets of the city, but in your home. Why wouldn’t you?’ ”
Admittedly “shy about awards” — Dern also has Oscar
nominations for 1991’s Rambling Rose and 2015’s Wild —
she suggests that her attitude somehow relates to hailing
from a Hollywood acting dynasty. She was born and raised
in LA, and her father is the twice Oscar-nominated Bruce
Dern and her mother is the three-times nominated Diane
Ladd; they divorced when she was two and are both still
working aged 85. “My acting heroes, my legends,” was
how Dern described them in her Oscars speech.
Known for her versatility, Dern established herself in
two David Lynch cult classics, 1986’s Blue Velvet and
1990’s Wild at Heart, before starring in the Jurassic Park
blockbusters. (Alongside her rumoured former flame Jeff
Goldblum, she is reprising her paleobotanist role for next
year’s Jurassic World: Dominion, the sixth film in the fran-
chise.) In recent years the prizes and prize parts have led
to this golden career stage being dubbed the “Dernais-
sance”. What does she think of the portmanteau? “Well,
it’s hilarious,” she says wryly. “It’s been used in this house
with great irreverence and mockery, I can promise you.”
The reason for our interview is not Dern’s red-hot
acting work but because the 54-year-old is the new muse
in a collaboration between Proenza Schouler, the New
York fashion label, and Mercedes-Benz. Her 20-year-old
son, Ellery, whom she shares with Ben Harper, her musi-
cian ex-husband, also stars in the campaign. He’s all
cheekbones, curls and youthfulness; she’s all windswept
hotness in midlife prime. It’s inspired casting by Jack
McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the couple behind
Proenza Schouler, which is loved by perpetual cool girls
such as Chloë Sevigny and Emily Ratajkowski. “When
we did Big Little Lies, it felt so right that my character,
Renata, would be very high-fashion conscious and
wore a lot of Proenza Schouler,” Dern says. “On a work
level and in my own life I love them and became friends
with them. We went to the Met Ball together several
years ago.”
Renata Klein and Nora Fanshaw, the impeccably put
together lawyer in Marriage Story, are superb power
dressers. Does Dern, who is 5ft 10in, lean the same way in
real life? “No,” she says without hesitation. “I definitely
leave that to overwhelming characters.”
She and Ellery, a model and aspiring
musician, were wowed by the designers’
commitment to sustainability, the
gender-neutral collection and a fully
electric Merc. “For so many of us now,
and certainly my son and daughter’s
generation, they won’t consider some-
thing luxurious if it’s not protective of
the planet,” Dern says. “I’m so excited at
the few leaders we have in high-level
fashion, Proenza Schouler and my friend
Stella McCartney as prime examples,
who are really leading the charge.”
It sounds as if Ellery and his 16-year-old sister, Jaya, are
passionately eco-minded and politically conscious. Do
they keep Dern on her toes? “Oh yeah. You mean shamed
on a daily basis?” she says, her eyes widening as if to say,
“You have no idea.” “Thank God a generation has come
along to shame us constantly until we actually change
things. I literally think that’s what they’re here to do.
‘Really? You’re gonna say that? That’s a microaggression.’
‘Really? You’re gonna do that? That is so wasteful.’ Every
question is pushing us to look at it differently.”
In the limelight for her entire adult life — she was 18
when she appeared alongside Cher in the 1985 movie
Mask — Dern has long been vocal about power abuses inDo Dern’s
kids keep her
on her toes?
‘Oh yeah. You
mean shamed
on a daily
basis?’
Below Dern with her children, Ellery and Jaya Harper, and
her mother, Diane Ladd, at the Academy awards, 2020The Sunday Times Style • 61