

Lula's role in "Wild at Heart," which opens today, is no "bit part," that's for sure. "Before that it was just a bit part here and a bit part there." "I don't consider my acting career to really have started until I got the part in "Foxes,' " she says. Her theater work includes "Hamlet" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" during her studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.

Dern's other films include "Teachers," "Mask," "Smooth Talk," "Blue Velvet," "Haunted Summer" and "Fat Man and Little Boy." Her first full role came in "Foxes," when she was 11. She then appeared in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." Ladd also is in "Wild at Heart," playing Lula's mother, Marietta Fortune.ĭern's first role was a walk-on in the 1973 film "White Lightning," with Burt Reynolds. "If they had only seen me in "Mask' or "Blue Velvet,' then they had no idea what they were about to see in "Wild at Heart.' " Dern is the daughter of actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. "The thing I liked the most about Lula was there were no boundaries," Dern says. In "Wild at Heart," her latest movie, Dern is as "hot as Georgia asphalt" and is in love (or lust) with Nicolas Cage.ĭern, 23, plays Lula in director David Lynch's Follow-the-Yellow-Brick-Road picture.

IN "Mask," her first big film, Laura Dern was the shy blind girl who befriended Eric Stoltz.
