Don't besmirch Tony Bennett! 
Posted on 04/25/2007 8:07:06 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
From Monsters and Critics.com
People News
Laura Dern blames ten year old Ellen kiss for career backlash
By Stone Martindale
Apr 24, 2007, 16:06 GMT
Laura Dern blames her lack of work on a ten year old kiss with Ellen DeGeneres on television.
CNN reports that ten years after the smooch, Dern appeared with Ellen on Monday on DeGeneres' syndicated talk show to reflect on the "aftermath."
DeGeneres, 49, came out of the closet in real life while her sitcom character's coming-out episode aired too, Dern kissed the comedian during a guest shot on the ABC series as Ellen's "lesbian love interest."
Dern claimed to Ellen "she couldn't get an acting job for more than a year afterward."
"There was certainly backlash, I guess, (that) we all felt from it," she told DeGeneres, who said she "was sorry" and "had no idea" that Dern was toast in Tinseltown.
Her career in the deep freezer was "awfully terrifying," recalled Dern, who said she's grateful for the "extraordinary experience and opportunity" to be a part of the historic "out" episode, which also featured Oprah Winfrey, Demi Moore and Melissa Etheridge.
Meanwhile, Heath Ledger gets cast as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Maybe the thinking on gays on film has changed or maybe he is just a better actor. I’m willing to go with the latter since Brokeback is now an interchangeable adjective with gay.
What really hurt her is that her dad shot John Wayne in the back in "The Cowboys".
Laura’s had just about as much work in the last 10 years as Anne Heche has. A public kiss with another woman didn’t hurt Brittney Spears career did it? Umm, scratch that last part.
By the time she hit her 30s, there was a new crop of eye-candy babes to take her place and I'm sure the calls slowed down.
It’s sad but true, female film stars have very short shelf-lives and limited opportunities for great roles anyway.
The film market has always skewed towards teenage boys, who prefer male action heros to mature females. They like their women young and bouncy.
This is a “look at me” “victim” “bigotry” PR piece.
She still gets work. She just starred in another David Lynch movie (her third leading role for him). His films aren’t widely seen.
She was in some kind of abortion comdey film that purported to make fun of “both sides”.
I don’t think that she was ever looking for the same roles Jennifer Aniston was seeking.
Well, that’s it. She was a cute teenager who blossomed into a bony, irritating adult - the kiss had nothing to do with it. ;)
Don't besmirch Tony Bennett!
Probably most famous for being Bruce Dern’s daughter, which is how she probably came by opportunities in Hollywood in the first place.
If she’s 49 now, I susspect that the bias that she may have been struggling against is one that prevails in LA; that of looking like a better than averaage attractive middle-aged woman, while no longer having those traffic stopping looks that she used to have.
It happens to us all, honey. But in my profession I’m less likely to be out of work becasue of my sagging boobs.
The difference between Bruce Dern and Jack Nicholson? Bruce didn’t do drugs.
But she was only 25 when that was filmed. She's close to 40 now. If cute was all she had going for her, it's not surprising her career stalled.
She was nowhere near as shrill as the two kids in that movie. Personally, I spent most of the film HOPING that both of those kids (especially the boy) would be ripped to pieces by some dinosaur in the most gruesome and horrific manner possible. Man, they were annoying!
Well I guess she has to have an acceptable explanation as to why she can’t find work — one that won’t offend the libs running the movie business. (Blame it on that Conservative behind the tree.)
Of course, a simpler explanation is that, at 49, she’s in that career notch where there just isn’t much work for an actress. When she’s 59 things may change.
Coming out as a militant, in-four-face homo killed Ellen's otherwise hilarious sitcom. Her career bounced back when she went back to just being a funny lady. Another example: Rosie.
Must have been a backlash against Laura’s acting.
I recall after the show in one interview she commented that a lot of people warned her that appearing in that episode could be a big mistake, but because the episode was the talk of the town she wasn't worried about it. Well, it seems to me those people were on target, and she should have listened. Actions have consequences.
Oh, those kids were so obnoxious, weren't they? Personally, I was cheering on the Velocoraptors in that kitchen scene. "Get them! He's right there in the cabinet! RIGHT THERE!" ;-)
DeGeneres is 49 not Dern. Laura Dern just turned 40, so she wiped out her career between the ages of 30 and 40.
Biography for
Laura DernDate of Birth
10 February 1967, Los Angeles, California, USABirth Name
Laura Elizabeth DernHeight
5' 10" (1.78 m)Mini Biography
Laura Dern was born on February 10, 1967 into a moviemaking family - her father is Bruce Dern and her mother is Diane Ladd. Dern was exposed to movie sets and the movie industry from infancy, and obtained several bit parts as a child. Her parents divorced when Dern was two and Dern lost contact with her father for several years as a result.
Her parents' background and her own early taste of the moviemaking world soon convinced the young Dern to pursue acting herself. Like so many young actors, her decision may have been influenced by social awkwardness -- the child of 60s counterculture parents, she was steeped in Eastern mysticism and political radicalism, and was seen as an oddball by her more conservative classmates. Her gawky physical appearance didn't help - even before her teens, she had achieved most of her impressive 5' 10" height, was rail-skinny (other than precociously wide hips), had huge feet and a slouching posture, and for all this was often teased by classmates. Perhaps the nine-year-old Dern found refuge by studying acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute.
The first success for the young Dern came in 1980, with a role in Adrian Lyne's Foxes (1980), a teen movie starring Jodie Foster. She followed this with several small parts, or parts in small movies, such as Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1981) and Teachers (1984), as a student who has an affair with a teacher. (Her mother objected to her active presence on movie sets at age thirteen, which required Dern to sue for emancipation so she could play her role in "The Fabulous Stains"). Her next roles, as the blind girl who befriends the deformed boy in Mask (1985), and as a teenaged girl whose sexual awakening collides with a mysterious older man in Smooth Talk (1985), gave her career an important boost. Dern appeared to have made it with a leading role in David Lynch's acclaimed Blue Velvet (1986), but it was four years before her next notable film, and this was the bizarre Wild at Heart (1990), also directed by Lynch.
The following year, Dern starred in Rambling Rose (1991), which would become her signature performance, as a sexually-precocious, free-spirited young housemaid in the South in the 1930s. Dern earned an Oscar nomination for her performance, and so did her mother and co-star, Diane Ladd. Dern continues to win prominent roles on the big screen, often in smaller, highly-regarded human dramas such as October Sky (1999), I Am Sam (2001) and We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004), although she is perhaps most widely known for her repeat role as Ellie Sattler in the summer adventure movies Jurassic Park (1993) and Jurassic Park III (2001), or for her guest performance on "Ellen" (1994), as the woman to whom Ellen finally comes out as a lesbian.
Dern's pre-teen gawkiness matured into lithe beauty, but this doesn't prevent Dern from fearlessly throwing herself into a wide variety of roles which are sometimes unflattering, an excellent example being her unflinchingly comic portrayal of an intensely annoying loser whose pregnancy becomes a social and political football in Citizen Ruth (1996). This results in Dern being one of the most interesting actors working in Hollywood today.
Having previously dated such Hollywood talent as Treat Williams, Renny Harlin, Kyle MacLachlan, Jeff Goldblum and Billy Bob Thornton, Dern was most recently engaged to musician Ben Harper, and the couple had a child, Jaya, in 2004. Early in her career, Dern was roommate to Marianne Williamson, the spirituality guru. Dern attended two days of college at UCLA and one semester at USC.
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