Bruce Dern has paid tribute to his late ex-wife, Diane Ladd. The father of actor Laura Dern honoured her passing in a statement to Us Weekly. "Diane was a tremendous actress and I feel like, a bit of a 'hidden treasure' until she ran into David Lynch," the Coming Home actor wrote. "When he cast her as Laura's mom in Wild at Heart it felt like the world then really understood her brilliance. She was a great value as a decades-long board member of SAG, giving a real actress' point of view. "She lived a good life," he continued. "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." Earlier in the day, Laura confirmed in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter that Ladd had died at her home in Ojai, California. She was 89. Dern and Ladd were married from 1960 to 1969. The former couple also shared a second daughter, who died at 18 months after a drowning accident in 1962. "If you lose a child, it's very hard to cope," Ladd shared in her memoir, Honey, Baby, Mine. "We were struggling actors. We could hardly make it. We had to stay in the same house where she died because we couldn't afford to leave. His family could have helped us, but they didn't."