Actress Diane Ladd Dies at 89

Diane Ladd, the three-time Academy Award-nominated actress known for her vivid performances in films like Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Wild at Heart, died Monday at her home in Ojai, California. She was 89.

Her daughter, actress Laura Dern, announced the death in a statement, noting that Ladd passed with Dern by her side. "My amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother, Diane Ladd, passed with me beside her this morning," Dern wrote. "She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created. We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now." A cause of death was not immediately specified, but Ladd had been battling idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease diagnosed in 2018 that led doctors to give her only months to live at the time.

Born Rose Diane Ladner on November 29, 1935, in Laurel, Mississippi, Ladd grew up in a family connected to the arts; she was a second cousin of playwright Tennessee Williams. Though offered a scholarship to study law at Louisiana State University, she chose acting, beginning her career in the 1950s with television appearances on shows such as...