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Diane Ladd in Beverly Hills, Calif., in July, 2016. A gifted comic and dramatic performer, Ladd had a long career in television and on stage before breaking through in film.Richard Shotwell/The Canadian Press
Diane Ladd, the three-time Academy Award nominee whose roles ranged from the brash waitress in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore to the protective mother in Wild at Heart, has died at 89.
Ladd’s death was announced Monday by daughter Laura Dern, who issued a statement saying her mother and occasional co-star had died at her home in Ojai, California, with Dern at her side. Dern, who called Ladd her “amazing hero” and “profound gift of a mother,′ did not immediately cite a cause of death.
“She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created,” Dern wrote. “We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now.”
A gifted comic and dramatic performer, Ladd had a long career in television and on stage before breaking through as a film performer in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 release Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. She earned an Oscar nomination for supporting actor for her turn as the acerbic, straight-talking Flo, and went on to appears in dozens of movies over the following decades. Her many credits included Chinatown, Primary Colors and two other movies for which she received best supporting nods, Wild at Heart and Rambling Rose.
