''Sex is utterly fascinating to me because so much of [a woman's] self-worth is based on it,'' muses Dern, who is working toward a psychology degree. ''In my [films] — Smooth Talk, Wild at Heart, Rambling Rose — all of those characters are deeply affected by their sexuality.''
Current case in point: the critically acclaimed Citizen Ruth, which Miramax is in the process of rereleasing. The black comedy stars Dern as a pregnant, glue-sniffing derelict caught between pro-choice and anti-abortion forces — a character with virtually no redeeming qualities, and yet the actress makes her compelling through sheer, spontaneous emotion. Goldblum first brought her the script, and, says Dern, ''I've never laughed so hard in my life.'' Despite having read the text aloud with her, Goldblum was unprepared for how brilliantly she pulled the role off: ''Like a souffle, she rises to the occasion.''
''It's as if her soul pours through the pores of her skin,'' says actress Diane Ladd, Dern's mother and sometime costar (Rambling Rose, Ruth). ''When she first acted, at age 11 [in the 1980 feature film Foxes], director Adrian Lyne said to me, 'Your daughter has the same cinematic magnetism as Katharine Hepburn.' '' Ladd remembers being furious. ''I didn't want her to be an actress; I wanted her to have a good, normal life!''
Ladd and her husband, actor Bruce Dern, divorced when Laura was 2. After some estrangement, Bruce and Laura have grown close, and the younger Dern staunchly defends her upbringing. ''Just like the [antigay] mind-set, there's some idea that divorce is wrong,'' says Dern. ''But I'm grateful that my parents divorced. They shouldn't have been married anymore.''
Ladd is no longer concerned about her daughter's career choices. Although she has yet to see the Ellen episode, she says she's ''sure whatever Laura chooses to do is good. I've raised her as a bird to fly, not to clip her wings. She's got a good, solid foundation.''
With playwright Tennessee Williams for a cousin and Shelley Winters for a godmother, one might say Dern was born to ruffle feathers. ''All things that are dangerous territory are highly interesting to me,'' says Dern. ''We're so afraid of being wrong and making mistakes. I see my grandmother in her 80s saying 'I should've married Joe Murphy when I was 18.' To this day, my greatest fear is based on my grandmother not having married Joe Murphy.''
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