Actress Laura Dern ("Jurassic Park") poses for the June 2019 issue of "InStyle" magazine, photographed by Pamela Hanson:
"'Ambition' was a dirty word for women when I was a little girl," said Dern. "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 mom's friend Jane Fonda, and Gena Rowlands.
"...I was told growing up that to be an actress of quality you shouldn’t make money because serious actresses didn’t make money. Actors made money. I was lucky enough to be nominated for an 'Oscar' along with my mom for 'Rambling Rose'. We were offered a very prestigious hair campaign for high-fashion magazines. Women were categorized as 'whores' for being businesswomen.
"At the same time, men were producing. And I remember once talking about how inspired I was by Robert Redford and what he was doing as a producer for social-justice films and how he created 'Sundance' as a lab for film.
"I came in thinking I should apologize for already having a name. And I was lucky. I got to work with David Lynch, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jonathan Demme and Peter Bogdanovich — filmmakers who were getting to make their movies, cast who they wanted, have the endings they wanted.
"Their movies made only so much money, but I learned growing up in the Hal Ashby school of the '70's that we're lucky to get to make our art. And I don't regret anything. I've realized the kind of actor I want to be, the kind of storyteller I want to be, what kind of content I want to make now because of those teachers..."
Click the images to enlarge...
