Photo: Steve Granitz / ©WireImage.com

Born in Los Angeles, CA; trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute (NYC) and RADA, London. The daughter of actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, this at-first-glance innocent looking actress became one of the more intriguing leads of films, TV and theater of the mid-1980s and 90s. Dern first registered as a troubled pregnant teen in TEACHERS (1984). Her effective portrayal of a blind girl in love with the disfigured protagonist of MASK (1985) threatened to typecast her in "symbol of purity" roles until filmmakers Joyce Chopra (SMOOTH TALK, 1985) and David Lynch (BLUE VELVET, 1986) explored her aura of latent dangerous sexuality in films that exposed the darker side of American smalltown life. Dern demonstrated her wider range with a hell-raising performance as Lula, Nicolas Cage's uninhibited traveling companion, in Lynch's WILD AT HEART (1990). The next year she won widespread critical acclaim as Rose, a sweetly wanton orphan whose presence disrupts a Southern family in the 1930s, in Martha Coolidge's RAMBLING ROSE (1991). Dern was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar® for this performance, and her mother, who co-starred, was nominated as Best Supporting Actress -- the first time a mother-daughter team was nominated in the same year for the same film. Dern has also worked on stage and TV, winning a Golden Globe for her performance in the HBO docudrama "Afterburn" (1992). She returned to features with the female lead in Steven Spielberg's dinosaur saga, JURASSIC PARK (1993), co-starring Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough. She and Goldblum (who was attached to Geena Davis at the time) began a romantic relationship during this film. JURASSIC PARK was followed by a supporting role in a high-profile film, as Dern portrayed a wisecracking criminal justice expert in Clint Eastwood's A PERFECT WORLD (1993). One of her hidden gems is her portrayal of the glue-sniffing pregnant woman at the center of the abortion controversy in CITIZEN RUTH (1996). Other notable credits include TEACHERS (1984), SMOOTH TALK (1985), HAUNTED SUMMER (1988), FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY (1989), OCTOBER SKY (1999), DR. T & THE WOMEN (2000), DADDY AND THEM, NOVOCAINE, FOCUS, JURASSIC PARK III and I AM SAM (all 2001), WE DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (2004), HAPPY ENDINGS and THE PRIZE WINNER OF DEFIANCE, OHIO (both 2005), LONELY HEARTS and INLAND EMPIRE (both 2006), YEAR OF THE DOG (2007), and TENDERNESS and JURASSIC PARK IV (both planned for 2008).  Nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role 1991: RAMBLING ROSE 1 nomination