Laura Dern

I like to be OPEN about MY passions and my OPINIONS

LAURA BROWN: How ambitious were you when you started acting?

LAURA DERN: Not at all. “Ambition” was a dirty word for women when I was a little girl. Women who are ambitious are cold, calculating and unsexy—that was the idea presented to my generation. To be sexy was to be demure, subservient even. And I was raised by actresses, like my mother [Diane Ladd], my godmother Shelley Winters, my mum’s friend Jane Fonda, and Gena Rowlands. I saw powerful women as artists or daring to challenge the medical profession and fighting to be doctors—but they weren’t in a boardroom. They weren’t