Laura Dern Has the Spirit of Seventies Cinema

Laura Dern is such a child of Hollywood that she can trace her conception to a movie set: “The Wild Angels,” the Roger Corman biker flick that starred her parents, the actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, in 1966. The couple split up when Dern was two, and she grew up amid the chaotic, creative ferment of seventies cinema, when Hollywood was embracing off-kilter actresses such as Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Dern’s mother, who died on Monday, at the age of eighty-nine.