Laura Dern

I just...

Now I get to just be a dame.

You know what?

I think the coolest thing was I remember actually calling home and calling my mom after just a day of crying all day and thinking, maybe this isn't the most fun job.

Maybe this isn't, like I didn't understand all these feelings and where to put them.

And I was blessed to have parents I could talk to about that and get some distance from things and learn how to, even though it's,

emotional and you can kind of crack open all these spaces you don't have to like live in it yeah it can be healing and a and a job toward healing and not something that kind of rips you apart in some weird way but you felt that you'd pulled it off yeah those the the tears were believable and all that yeah yeah i felt i felt i think i felt a little scared by it because i i

It wasn't intentional.

I wasn't trying to be a method actor.

I was a kid who just had a day of crying all day.

And my body was like shaking and unhappy like when you've cried all day.

And so I think just the getting to the place where at the end of that day, I learned kind of what was me and what was...

this other play space of discovery.

And I think the deepest joy, which happened around that time and also on Blue Velvet, which were like a year and a half apart.

Those were a couple of years in my life where I discovered empathy as this like badass superpower.

That being vulnerable and being empathetic and being part of a, you know, a team of people where you're just going to kind of reveal yourself to each other and it's going to somehow be hopefully safe and generous.

It was like so radical and hardcore and...

You know, I felt, yeah, I felt like a kid who just found a sport.

But it is crazy that, you know, you can't fake truth.

Like you could fake a lot of things.