Diane Ladd Answers Every Question We Have About Wild at Heart

On her first mother-daughter pairing with Laura Dern, why Blue Velvet made her “angry,� and what went through her mind during that improvised lipstick scene. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo: Samuel Goldwyn/Everett Collection

Diane Ladd had a handful of great movies to her name when Wild at Heart opened in 1990: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Chinatown, The Wild Angels. But she’d never stared into a mirror and smeared red lipstick across her face because her daughter ran off with an Elvis-talking smoothie and the gangster she’s hired to execute him is about to kill her boyfriend too. David Lynch’s incendiary fantasia divided audiences from the moment its Palme d’Or win provoked boos at Cannes. Still, the electricity in Ladd’s performance was indisputable, especially that barn-burning lipstick scene.

As Marietta Fortune, a vampy martini guzzler who has assassins on speed dial, Ladd’s desperation makes her seem like she’d rip her own skin off if it didn’t mean shedding her southern glamour. Marietta has murdered before, and she’ll do it again. She’s just trying to protect her baby girl, uninhibited 20-year-old Lula (Laura Dern, working with her mother in earnest for the first time). Or is she getting back at Lula’s beau, Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage), for rejecting Marietta’s advances? You can watch Wild at Heart a dozen times and come away with a dozen different readings. Lynch’s Wizard of Oz–inspired odyssey through the dark American spirit plays even better today than it did 34 years ago, Cannes jeers notwithstanding.

Wild at Heart was a modest hit at best, but Ladd made off with a much-deserved Oscar nomination. As a campaign tactic, she wrote letters to voters and hosted a spaghetti dinner reportedly attended by the likes of Esther Williams and Shelley Winters. She believes she could have won had the studio, the Samuel Goldwyn Company, put a little more juice behind her bid. Regardless, Marietta has surpassed the test of time. To commemorate her volcanic turn, Ladd called up Vulture to reminisce.

I adore this movie, and I understand that you do too, right?
Yes, I do. Because in spite of all the violence — let’s say there’s a Schwarzenegger movie with a kid, and he says, “Here’s a gun. You just go ahead and shoot granddaddy in the knee.� Everybody laughs. You know what I mean? But if you were despondent, you lost loved ones, you lost your fortune, you’re ill, whatever, and you’re going home to kill yourself, on the way home, if you stopped and saw a David Lynch movie, you wouldn’t do it when you got home. David does not make fun of violence. It’s so violent that you abhor it.

What was your first interaction with Lynch like?
David told Laura he wanted to meet me. She’d done Blue Velvet with him. I knew he was a genius, but I had a very busy day, unfortunately, that I couldn’t get out of. He wanted me to join him for lunch, and I really could not. But I went by to say hello. He was lovely. We talked, and I never said, “I love your film Blue Velvet.� So as I got up to leave, before I hit the door, he turned to Laura and said, “Your mama hates my movie.� And she said, “Yeah, she does.� She told me this later, and I said, “My God, why did you tell him that?� She said, “Well, it’s the truth. You tell me always be truthful.� I said, “But maybe I want to work for him anyhow.�

So it is true that you weren’t a fan of Blue Velvet?
I was except for one reason. I was angry that he would let one of the most beautiful women in the world, Isabella Rossellini, who he was in love with, stand nude in front of the whole world and light her so horribly. It wasn’t just bad — it was really bad. I thought, That’s a desecration. Would he do that to the blessed Virgin Mary? Why would he do that to his own true love? She’s got one of the most beautiful bodies in the world, but it didn’t look like it when he showed it. As a woman, I took exception just to that. That’s all it was.

So what convinced you that you did want to work with him?
Well, I figured I’d never hear from him again. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, I get this phone call and it’s David Lynch. He says, “Diane, I’ve written a script, and it’s gonna star your daughter and Nicolas Cage. But there’s a starring role of the mother.� And you know what he says to me? He doesn’t say anything about the past. He didn’t ask me if I could meet again. He says, “I would be honored if you would star in this role for me.� Now, listen. When somebody appreciates you — a painting you’ve done, a meal you’ve cooked, a smile you gave them — and they’re honorable with integrity, that is like sunshine, healing every wound in your body.

That’s incredibly well said.
I said, “Of course I’ll read it.� And it was a magnificent role to begin with. That was it. I got hired. And let me just say that David Lynch is one of the most gentle and gracious and kind directors I’ve ever been privileged to work with. The man never, never, never says a dirty word. A curse word never passes his lips. He never blows his top. When he’s directing you, he’ll say, “May we try it again?� If you’ve poured your soul out in a scene and then you look up to see his face, you want to know, Did I do it okay? We’re all vulnerable human beings. And if you’ve done it, David has a tear in his eye. And he whispers almost to himself because he’s a great artist. He says, “I want to paint a picture.� If you hear that man say, “I want to paint a picture,� you’ve just given him real gold, not fool’s gold.

Wild at Heart is sort of a demented take on The Wizard of Oz. How much were you channeling the Wicked Witch of the West? 
None. I’m a Method actress. Even if it’s watching one little child be mean to another child and you take that into your soul — or anything you see human beings do to one another that you put in your mind and that hurts you — you pull that out and relive that. So all of the pain or anything you do is real in a film. It’s not just fake. Your body relives it.

In your eyes, is Marietta so hell-bent on keeping Sailor and Lulu apart because she can’t have him herself? Or does she actually think that she is protecting her daughter?
No, she didn’t want Sailor at all. She wants her daughter, as did I — as should every parent — to have a better life than she had. Marietta, in my mind, had a very hard life. She wants her daughter to be somebody, to learn something, to evolve, and she don’t think Sailor’s the way. She thinks he’s trouble. Instead of pulling her daughter up in life, she thinks he’ll pull her down. She doesn’t care what she has to do. She’s going to make sure her daughter has a better life. She’s the tigress mother.

You said she had a hard life. What biographical details did you fill in for her? Did you and David talk about her background?
No, I made it all up for myself to make her real. One day, the script said that Marietta gets in bed, curls up with her baby dog, and is sucking her thumb. I looked at him and said, “David, I don’t want to do that.� He said, “What do you want to do?� I said, “I want to put on a long satin nightgown, I want to stand in the middle of the bed holding a martini and drinking it, and I want to sway to the old music within my head.� He said okay, I did it, and he loved it. Laura saw it and said, “David, you didn’t know that my mother was the perfect David Lynch actress, did you?� But the big scene, as we know, was the scene where I painted my face red.

Yes, of course. Obviously the best scene in the entire movie. Was that in the script? 
No. She was just looking in the mirror. But here’s the thing. I stare at myself and I have her thinking about cutting her wrist, which she’s not going to do because she’s too strong a woman. But as I sat there staring in the mirror, at that time in television they were constantly using perfume and lipstick and makeup on women. They were starting to really use sex as a weapon to sell cosmetics. The sublingual motto of programming they were feeding all young women is, Use this lipstick and all the men will come racing to your door ‘cause you’re not good enough. Who are you without powder? It was ticking me off. So I took the lipstick, and I’m holding it to put on my lips. She’s thinking about her wrist, but she’s putting lipstick on her lips and thinking, Yeah, I’ll attract them, maybe if I put the lipstick bigger. If I use it all over my face, will the whole world come? More, more, more. I’ll use it all. So that’s what that was and then the whole face became painted red.

Wow. That is incredible. Did David know you were going to do that before you started?
No, he just let me do it. The thing is, there is a connection between a director and an actress, as there is between two best friends or a husband or a wife, where somebody can start to say something and the other person finishes it. Olympia Dukakis and I could work like that. We were like Frick and Frack. You start to get a symmetry between you. I could feel without looking at him that it was okay. If he didn’t like it, I could feel it without having to stop the scene. But that whole scene was simply my comment on the sign of the times, on commerciality, which, as we know today, has gone way too far.

After you did that for the first time, what was David’s response?
He just said, “I love it. I’m keeping that.�

Had you tried the scene without smearing the lipstick all over your face?
No, it came like water down your throat.

You must be aware by this point of how much people just eat that scene up and love it.
I know there’s a lot of performers, especially in New Orleans, who painted their faces red and pretended to be Marietta. They got it, somehow, without me ever explaining it. It wasn’t a joke. It was a comment on our time. You know, I’m not an actor. I’m a teacher. The screen or the stage is my blackboard, and so whatever I taught is what’s in you. It’s reflecting you, saint or sinner, male or female, child or old person. I’m reflecting parts of your soul, parts of who you are. The work is for you.

Another little moment that I adore comes early in the movie. When Marietta first forbids Lulu from seeing Sailor, you guzzle a martini while looking directly at the camera. Did David tell you to do that, or was it also instinct?
It was just pure instinct, I guess. He didn’t tell me to do it. I was just doing my thing.

Apparently it was also your idea to give Laura a lollipop in the abortion scene.
I honestly don’t remember if it was my idea or not. But Marietta, for all her earthly problems, was a good mother, or at least a caring mother. The scene at the end, where they set fire to the house — the whole thing about the witch flying on the broom was added at the end. I said, “David, I can’t be setting fire to that house. My whole character has been fighting to save Lula. Why would I turn around and endanger her?� He said, “I don’t know, but you’ve gotta do it. I need it.� So I said, “Well, there’s only one way I can do it. I’ve got to play her stoned out of her gourd so she doesn’t know what she’s doing.� So I played it like someone had given me something crazy, some horrible thing like ecstasy or something.

Did you know before the shoot that Nic Cage would be doing an Elvis voice throughout the whole thing?
No.

What was he like in general?
He was very lovely. Charming to work with. When I met Bruce Dern, Laura’s father, I was very, very young, like 18. We were doing a play Off Broadway in New York called Orpheus Descending, by Tennessee Williams, who incidentally was a distant cousin of mine. Bruce wore a snakeskin jacket in the play. When Nicolas was at Laura’s house and they were rehearsing, he saw a picture of Bruce in his snakeskin jacket, and that’s why he wanted a snakeskin jacket.

That’s a fun connection. After the movie came out, you said you had to essentially run your own Oscar campaign. You took out your own trade ads and hosted a spaghetti dinner for a handful of voters. I assume that means the studio wouldn’t do those things for you. Do you know why? 
No, that’s not completely true. Was my first Oscar nomination Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore?

That’s right.
That’s when I had no money. The first person that saw that film was Gena Rowlands, who said to me, “I’m gonna vote for you for Best Supporting Actress.� And I said to her, “What are you talking about? I don’t have a big enough part to win that.� Gena is an amazing soul, one of our greats. And she said, “Oh, honey, you do.� She gave me great encouragement. But at the time that this happened, I was new. I remember Marlon Brando saying to me, “What do you do with all your money?� And I said, “What money?� All I was paid for that whole performance was $5,000. This was my first big movie. I called up Mr. Scorsese, and I said, “Mr. Scorsese, my agents are negotiating. I just want you to know I don’t care what they pay me. I want to do this part for you, so don’t let them give this to anybody else.�

With Alice, some of my friends would throw a spaghetti party. They’d invite people over to watch my film, to make sure people saw it. I think that’s okay, but everybody has to be allowed to do it. That helped me get nominated for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. I won the British Academy Award. Now, we’ve changed the rules and you are not allowed to have a showing in your home. The only way you can show the movie with food is to have a legitimate screening room where people are invited. But I didn’t have to do much for Wild at Heart. I really didn’t. Goldwyn, the company that was doing it, did not send videos to everybody. So again, I was left without the support that was needed. Still, the picture caught on, because Whoopi Goldberg won that Oscar and she bet in Las Vegas that I would win.

Oh, that’s funny. So did you take out trade ads for yourself?
I’m trying to think clearly. I tried to do it for Alice, but I didn’t have the money. In fact, a very powerful person who ran a magazine called me on the phone and said, “Honey, if you’ve got enough money to spend, you can win this Oscar.� I said, “But I don’t have any money,� and she hung up in my face. It was the lady who was the head of The Hollywood Reporter. Now, when it came to Rambling Rose, I think people did have some parties for me. I think Esther Williams had a swimming party. Some people who were fans who I didn’t even know had parties. But Wild at Heart kind of caught on on its own. I think if I had had a big studio behind me I would have won, because on Rambling Rose they spent $75,000 on our campaign, whereas Whoopi Goldberg’s Paramount spent $1 million and a half.

But I feel at Oscar time that all those who are nominated are winners. They take the work to an elevated stage, which helps prevent mundanity from taking over. There was a lot of politics last year. We’ve had enough of that in Washington. We don’t need that kind of tap-dancing going on in our own Academy.

Let’s loop back around to Laura. Wild at Heart must have been a great experience for the two of you considering you turned around and did Rambling Rose the following year and then Enlightened years after that. 
It’s a very wonderful thing to work with your own, like when you walk into a butcher’s shop and he goes, “That’s my son helping me.� If you find the truth, then you remember who you are. So these pictures are to help us all find the truth. David Lynch is a genius. I think Mr. David Lynch is gonna stand up and do a new movie soon. I got that feeling.

Do you have any intel? There were rumors at one point that maybe he had a secret movie premiering at Cannes, and that ended up not happening. 
Hm, I can’t tell his business. But let me just say I just feel like the angels are talking to him. I don’t know everything for sure, but instinct says, “C’mon, David, here we go. You’re not through yet. You’ve got some destiny yet.� He honestly is one of the most pleasurable, wonderful human beings to be around. That is a real blessing.