A stage-trained blonde character player, Diane Ladd first garnered attention in 1974 with her roles in "Chinatown" and "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore". In the former, she was a woman of mystery while in the latter she delivered a scene-stealing turn as the wisecracking waitress Flo, a role that earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. "Discovered" by actor John Carradine who cast her in a production of "Tobacco Road", the Mississippi native moved to NYC where she enrolled at The Actors Studio and supported herself as a model and dancer at the Copacabana. She landed her first major stage role in an Off-Broadway production of her cousin Tennessee Williams' "Orpheus Descending" in 1959. Also in the cast was Bruce Dern, whom she married the following year. After making her feature debut in "Something Wild" (1961), Ladd had her first significant role alongside Dern in Roger Corman's landmark biker exploitation flick "The Wild Angels" (1966), and though there was the occasional prestige effort (i.e., Mark Rydell's "The Reivers" 1969), she spent most of her early movie career in low-to-medium budget genre fodder like "Rebel Rousers" (1970), another biker pic with Dern.

Ladd made her Broadway debut in "Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights" (1968), and after her Academy Award nomination brought her a degree of recognition, she returned to Broadway as "Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander", one-third of "A Texas Trilogy" (1976). Film offers were still not forthcoming, so she turned to the small screen, joining the cast of the CBS sitcom "Alice" as Belle Dupree, a toned-downed version of Flo, when Polly Holliday moved on to her own spin-off. Throughout the 80s, the actress continued to make appearances in features (i.e., "All Night Long" 1981, "Black Widow" 1987) and turned up as Main Line socialite Margaret Kelly, mother to "Grace Kelly" (ABC, 1983), as well as assuming the maternal role in the 1990 ABC biopic "Rock Hudson". Ladd earned a second Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination playing mother to her real-life daughter Laura Dern in David Lynch's "Wild at Heart" (1990). As the murderous, witchlike Marietta, she was appropriately over-the-top in what was a typical Lynchian dreamscape. She and her daughter reteamed the following year for the modest "Rambling Rose", with Ladd as a Southern matron and Dern as a boarder who disrupts the genteel lives of her hosts. Both received Academy Award nominations, making them the first mother-daughter acting team to be nominated in the same year for the same film.

After starring opposite Mark Harmon in a "Hallmark Hall of Fame" remake of "Shadow of a Doubt" (CBS, 1991), Ladd began her run as recurring character Charlotte Cooper on that network's "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" before appearing in her daughter's directing debut, "The Gift" (1994), airing as part of Showtime's "Directed By" series. She subsequently played Dern's mother in the acclaimed miniseries "Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy" (CBS, 1996) and again in a raunchy, unbilled cameo for the feature "Citizen Ruth" (1996), a satire audaciously attacking both sides of the abortion issue, which starred Dern as an unredeemed inhalant "huffing" mother caught in the middle of the two factions. Ladd made her own directorial debut (from her own script) with "Mrs. Munck" (Showtime, 1996), acting opposite ex-husband Bruce Dern. She had a small role as Mamma Stanton, mother to the Clintonesque presidential candidate played by John Travolta, in Mike Nichols' "Primary Colors" (1998) and also appeared in Betty Thomas' "28 Days" (2000), starring Sandra Bullock. She was then back opposite her real-life daughter, playing Dern's mother in Billy Bob Thornton's "Daddy and Them" (2001), one of two movies that year serving as the director's follow-up to his acclaimed "Sling Blade" (1996).