Diane Ladd, the prolific Oscar-nominated actress and mother of Laura Dern, has died. She was 89.

Dern shared news of her mom's death on Wednesday, Nov. 3 in a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter. "My amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother, Diane Ladd, passed with me beside her this morning" at her home in Ojai, California, the statement read. "She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created."

Dern added, "We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now."

USA TODAY has reached out to representatives for Ladd and Dern.

Ladd earned the first of her three Oscar nominations for Martin Scorsese's 1974 drama "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," playing a matter-of-fact diner waitress named Flo who befriends Ellen Burstyn's widowed heroine.

Scorsese said in a statement to USA TODAY on Nov. 3 that he has "so many good memories of making 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore,' and my experiences with Diane are among the best." The actor added that it was "an experience" to watch Ladd "take the character of Flo and make something so vivid and funny and alive."

"Diane was a great improvisational actor — a matter of technique and discipline, but most of all instinct and artistry, and she had it all," Scorsese continued. "I loved my time working with Diane, a truly remarkable artist, and I wish we could have worked together again."

Ladd also received supporting actress nods in the early 1990s for David Lynch's "Wild at Heart" and Martha Coolidge's "Rambling Rose," both of which co-starred Dern.

"I love working with Laura," Ladd told New Orleans magazine in 2014. "Once when we were doing 'Wild at Heart,' she said, 'How was your day, Mom?' And I said, 'It was great. I worked with someone that everyone loved and respected and was incredible.' She said, 'Who is that?' ” and I said, 'It’s you, Laura. I’m proud of you as a professional – not just a talent, but the way you conduct yourself with humility as a human being.' "

Born in Laurel, Mississippi, Ladd got her start acting in the late 1950s on TV crime series such as "Decoy" and "Naked City." She worked steadily for the next decade, before finding big-screen success as prostitute Ida Sessions in Roman Polanski's classic film noir "Chinatown" in 1974, and as Chevy Chase's exceedingly proud mom in "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" in 1989.

When she first got the audition for the holiday comedy, "I said, I'm only about six years older than Chevy,' " Ladd recalled during a cast reunion in 2019. But after aging herself up with hair and makeup, "I walked in and Chevy was over there, and I said, 'Sonny boy! I love you, sonny boy!' And I got the job."

Ladd married actor Bruce Dern in 1960 and divorced nine years later. They had two daughters, Laura and Diane, and the latter died at just 18 months old after a tragic pool accident. Ladd married twice more to businessmen William Shea Jr. and Robert Hunter. Hunter, her husband of 26 years, died in July at 77.

Ladd opened up about her marriage to Dern in a 2023 interview with USA TODAY, saying, “He’s not such a great husband, but he's a really great actor. ... (Laura) is half of me and half of him.” The mother-daughter duo continued to work together in the 2000s, appearing in David Lynch's surreal "Inland Empire" and HBO dramedy "Enlightened."

In a statement to USA TODAY on Nov. 3, Dern called Ladd "a tremendous actress" and "lived a good life."

"I feel like (Diane was) a bit of a 'hidden treasure' until she ran into David Lunch," he said. "When he cast her as Laura's mom in 'Wild at Heart,' it felt like the world then really understood her brilliance."

Dern concluded: "She saw everything the way it was. She was a great teammate to her fellow actors. She was funny, clever, gracious. But most importantly to me, she was a wonderful mother to our incredible wunderkind daughter. And for that I will be forever grateful to her."

Throughout her six-decade career, Ladd was nominated for three Emmys and four Golden Globes, winning one for the sitcom "Alice," a spinoff series of "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." (She played Flo in the original film and a different waitress named Belle in the CBS show.) More recently, she appeared on TV in episodes of “Ray Donovan” and “Young Sheldon.”

In 2018, Ladd was diagnosed with lung disease and told she had only six months to live, although the doctor advised that taking walks could help increase her lung capacity.

And so she began taking daily walks with Dern, which her daughter recorded and later compiled into a book titled “Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding).”

"We started taking these walks to strengthen my lungs," Ladd said in a joint New York Times interview with Dern in 2023. "You got me to walk and talk, and that’s when we went beyond intuition and voiced everything. If one person reads our book and does the same − really talks to someone they love − writing it won’t have been in vain. Aside from that, all I can offer is a reflection of life itself. Art is just a mirror, and that’s why we go see movies: to learn who we are."

Contributing: Edward Segarra

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Diane Ladd, Oscar-nominated actress and Laura Dern's mom, dies at 89

Reporting by Brendan Morrow and Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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