Diane Ladd^†

A waitress role in a Scorsese film nobody predicted would matter turned Diane Ladd into one of the most nominated character actresses of her generation. Her turn as the wisecracking Flo in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) earned her a BAFTA and her first Oscar nomination. She wasn't playing a type. She was playing someone you'd actually met. Martin Scorsese gave her the part and the industry took notice.

The most specific footnote in Oscar history belongs to her. When Rambling Rose (1991) landed her a third Best Supporting Actress nomination, daughter Laura Dern got a Best Actress nod in the same film. No mother and daughter had ever received Oscar nominations for the same film before. Bruce Dern called her a 'hidden treasure until she ran into David Lynch,' which is either generous or accurate, depending on how you read her 1970s.

Working at the Copacabana paid for Actors Studio tuition. That combination of nightclub survival instinct and serious stage training explains a lot about how she lasted 70 years in this business. Tennessee Williams was her first cousin, which meant her 1959 Off-Broadway debut in Orpheus Descending was essentially a family production. She also directed Mrs. Munck (1995) herself, casting her ex-husband Bruce Dern in it.

Laura Dern announced her passing at her home in Ojai, saying she was at her mother's bedside when she died. Her cause of death, revealed two weeks later via her death certificate, was acute on chronic hypoxic respiratory failure, stemming from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis she'd been diagnosed with in 2018. Her husband Robert Charles Hunter had died three months before her, in July 2025. She was cremated on November 10.