Diane Ladd, actress/writer/director/author, is a winner of over 35 international awards including The British Academy Award, Golden Globe Award®, Independent Spirit Film Award and the Cannes’ Palme d’or Award. She has been nominated for three Emmy Awards® and three Academy Awards® for the films Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Wild at Heart and Rambling Rose. She starred with Laura Dern in the latter film and made Academy Award® history as the first mother/daughter duo to earn nominations for the same film. The late Princess Diana chose this film as one of her all-time favorites and honored it with a London Royal Premier and a party in their Honor.
Ladd’s most recent movie is 20th Century Fox’s Joy from Director David O. Russell that was released Christmas Day 2106. Other films to be released are I Dream Too Much starring Diane (Executive Producer, Richard Linklater), which premiered at Austin’s South by Southwest in 2015 and Sophie and the Rising Sun with Margo Martindale and Julianne Nicholson. Ladd has been in over 200 films and TV shows including the Alice TV Series for which she won the Golden Globe, Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital, and co-starred in the hit TV series, Enlightened with her daughter Laura Dern for HBO. She also won kudos and 3 “Best Director/Writer” awards for her film, Mrs. Munck in which she was the first woman to direct an ex-husband, Bruce Dern.
She has authored the books “Spiraling Through the School of Life – A Mental Physical and Spiritual Discovery,” and “Find Your Miracles,” which was endorsed by from Marianne Williamson, Stephen King, Whoopi Goldberg, Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Wayne Dwyer, among others. As a writer, she was honored at the 2014 Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans, celebrated for her newest book, “A Bad Afternoon for a Piece of Cake.” The book garnered praise from critic Rex Reed, who compared her to Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers as well as her cousin Tennessee Williams, stating “She has the same gift they do and you can’t learn this stuff in writing class.” Ladd is President of the Art and Culture Taskforce, a 501(c) 3 that promotes culture and arts in schools across America. She is the proud grandmother of ten loving grandchildren.
