The 15 Best Laura Dern Roles, Ranked

From her many David Lynch films to iconic TV performances, Laura Dern has long been an icon.

best laura dern movies
Design by Chineme Elobuike for Thrillist
Design by Chineme Elobuike for Thrillist

It's not facetious to say that Laura Dern is one of our greatest living actors—it's just the truth. Over a career spanning decades, Dern has single-handedly given us some of the best crying faces that have ever been seen on the silver screen, but beyond the absolutely incredible ways she can contort her expression, she inhabits her characters with unparalleled poise. From her teenage naivete in Joyce Chopra's Smooth Talk, one of her first roles, Dern has always shown a maturity beyond her age. And as such, she's done consistently amazing work, playing blustery lawyers, David Lynch's muse, and fiercely caring mothers. To honor the beloved actor—and because we didn't have the budget for a very large road sign and a cow or the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles—we attempted to rank her best work. We can't wait to see which of Dern's future roles we'll add.

laura dern in the last jedi
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

15. The Last Jedi (2017)

You could probably count the minutes of actual screen time that Laura Dern has as the Resistance fleet's purple-haired Vice-Admiral Amilyn Holdo in Star Wars: The Last Jedi on one hand, which makes her ability to dominate every scene she's in even more impressive. It helps that Dern's iconic statuesque height was draped in covetable, flowy fabrics every time she made an appearance, trying her best to wield some measure of control over a flailing and broken army. Though she wasn't in the movie for long, she was instrumental in ensuring the Resistance's eventual victory, saving an entire fleet by whipping out the eponymous Holdo Maneuver: ramming an enemy starship at lightspeed in one of the most stunning sequences in an already stunning movie. In a galaxy run by disorder and uncertainty, Holdo was the good guys' only hope. —Emma Stefansky

laura dern in marriage story
Netflix

14. Marriage Story (2019)

Dern finally won an Oscar for stomping around in power suits and heels as the fabulous divorce attorney Scarlett Johansson's Nicole hires in Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story. As Nora, Dern will be your best friend—curling up on a couch and handing you tissues—or your biggest adversary, absolutely dominating you in court. It's not totally unlike her work in Big Little Lies, but it is entrancing and destined to be memed. "We don't accept it structurally and we don't accept it spiritually," she says of society's reaction to women who err. We sure don't when it comes to criticism of you, Laura. —Esther Zuckerman

laura dern and kyle MacLachlan in blue velvet
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group

13. Blue Velvet (1986)

A Laura Dern and David Lynch teamup is pretty much always going to achieve something incredible, but let's face it: Dern isn't the guy's main muse. Kyle MacLachlan is. As such, in Blue Velvet, Lynch sends his floppy-haired college student Jeffrey on a dangerous and voyeuristic joyride through the underbelly of his small hometown after stumbling across a severed ear, and Dern's high school senior Sandy, overhearing her police detective father's phone calls from her bedroom, gently abets his obsession over the mystery of where it came from. With her feathered bangs, soft face, and demure voice, Dern is a model girl-next-door archetype, a beacon of innocence calling Jeffrey back from the darkness. Even though Sandy is a wide-eyed pushover, it's what Blue Velvet asked for and Dern obliged, delivering the frowniest cry ever seen. —Leanne Butkovic

laura dern in rambling rose
Seven Arts

12. Rambling Rose (1991)

Dern earned her first Oscar nomination for a movie that couldn't weather the hyperreactive culture wars of today. Rambling Rose pairs particularly well with Smooth Talk, both of which feature a ravenous Dern exploring a sexuality best described as sweaty and unfettered. In the former, she's a post-adolescent housekeeper in Depression-era Georgia who can't contain the carnal fixation she develops for her much older employer (Robert Duvall). Dern and Diane Ladd—playing Duvall's oblivious wife—were the first mother-daughter duo ever nominated for Oscars in the same year, and deservedly so: Dern instills the titular Rose with an overzealous naiveté that complicates the character's nymphomaniac-like tendencies, making this a delicious study in contradictions. —Matthew Jacobs

laura dern in little women
Sony Pictures Releasing

11. Little Women (2019)

Oh, to be one of Dern's little women! As the Marmee to the rambunctious and brilliant March girls—Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh), and Beth (Eliza Scanlen)—in Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's English lit-core novel, Dern takes a backseat to the daughters' troubles and ambitions, but her warmness drapes over her scenes like a hand-knit afghan. Marmee is the pillar keeping the March family in order, kindly demanding acts of charity from her children and offering soul-baring words of support when Jo needs it, but in her rare moments alone, Dern's tender smile fades, replaced by the mien of a woman whose emotions are being held together with twine and tape for the sake of her family. —LB

laura dern in wild 2014
Fox Searchlight Pictures

10. Wild (2014)

Before the Big Little Lies company was assembled, Wild first established the collaborative relationship between Reese Witherspoon, filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée, and Dern. An adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's memoir of the same name, Witherspoon portrays the writer on her ill-prepared, physically trying backpacking trip on the Pacific Crest Trail. She's compelled to attempt the hike because of the insurmountable grief she feels after the death of her mother Bobbi, played by Dern in flashbacks. There's no questioning Dern's maternal warmth, but it's the depth she brings to Bobbi as a survivor of abuse who maintains there's sunniness in the world. Her Oscar-nominated performance is an expressive light amid Wild's heavy drama, helping to capture Strayed's desire to be the person her mother believed her to be—but above all, she really makes you want to give your loved ones a call. —Sadie Bell

laura dern in inland empire
518 Media/Absurda

9. Inland Empire (2006)

What makes Inland Empire so impressive is not so much of what it's "about"—A woman caught up in a perverse mystery? Hollywood itself? Transcendental meditation?—but the accomplishment of the crew showing up to set every day and practically winging it, succumbing to the whims of David Lynch's 3am epiphanies, to result in a film that's even semi-coherent. Though she admitted to her own confusion—"The truth is I didn't know who I was playing—and I still don't know," she said at Inland Empire's Venice Film Festival premiere—Dern gamely weathered The Process like the consummate professional she is, turning in an enchanting performance as actress Nikki Grace, using her face as a canvas to shapeshift through the hallucinatory three-hour runtime. After putting all of her trust into Lynch, it's no wonder the filmmaker camped out on Hollywood Boulevard with huge banners and a cow to demand the Academy consider Dern for the Oscar race. —LB

renata klein, laura dern in big little lies
HBO

8. Big Little Lies (2017–2019)

From the start of HBO's adaptation of Liane Moriarty's novel, when Dern's Renata Klein threatens a first-grader in front of his class for allegedly choking her daughter, she makes it clear that she is not messing around. Rather than being a kindhearted figure, Dern shows her range in BLL as a power-suit-wearing, overprotective, boss-bitch mama bear. It's a balancing act she handles expertly, bringing comedic relief to the series even as she plays a mother in emotional turmoil. As the surprise second season saw Renata face bankruptcy, no thanks to her husband, Dern was often given little more than memeable material to work with. But even then, you can't deny she kept fans laughing at her incredible line delivery and spitfire rage, whether she was telling her kid's principal that she'd "buy a fucking polar bear for every kid in this school" or screaming at her husband behind bars that she "will not not be rich!" We sure don't see her wealth of talent ever fading. —SB

laura dern in smooth talk
International Spectrafilm

7. Smooth Talk (1985)

This '80s Sundance gem directed by Joyce Chopra and based on the Joyce Carol Oates short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is about the intersection of sexual exploration and exploitation, and Dern's 15-year-old Connie is at the center of it. The black sheep in her Southern family, she'd rather wear cutoffs to the mall and flirt with boys than help around the farmhouse like her mother (Mary Kay Place) asks her to. Closely following Connie's acts of teenage rebellion and her fateful meeting with a seedy older man (Treat Williams), the then-18-year-old paints a delicate portrait of the confusion girls can face when they feel empowered to step into their womanhood. With subtlety, the young star convinces you that freedom could be found lying out in the sun or riding shotgun, and how terrifying it is when that sense of innocence is lost. —SB

laura dern in jurassic park
Universal Pictures

6. Jurassic Park (1993)

Perhaps the most iconic role of Dern's storied career, her turn as paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park was a boon for both action movies and the herald of a more inclusive era in the biological sciences. (We love women in STEM.) Striding onto Isla Nublar in a pair of enormous, pleated khaki shorts and a tank-top-under-knotted-button-down combo that indie girls are still trying to emulate, Dr. Sattler is a force to be reckoned with, as a respected professional in her field who isn't opposed to jogging around the jungle in hiking boots or sticking her arm elbow-deep into Triceratops droppings. She's one of the most well-rounded action heroines in modern cinema, game to flirt a little with the hot mathematician, while shutting down the male characters' references to the gender binary in the next breath. Simply put, she's a gift to weirdo dinosaur girls everywhere. Dinosaurs eat man; woman inherits the earth. —ES

laura dern in twin peaks the return
Showtime

5. Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)

Reboots and revivals get a lot of criticism these days for explaining away too much of the mystery that makes a story work so well. When Twin Peaks fans learned that not only would David Lynch's revisitation of the series introduce the mythical Diane to whom Agent Dale Cooper's oblique dispatches were always addressed, but that she would be a pivotal character, some were skeptical. How silly fans felt, then, when Laura Dern's portrayal of the "cross between a saint and a cabaret singer" ended up being one of the best parts of the show. Dressed in slinky outfits and bold wigs with a cigarette and an arsenal of acidic remarks in hand, Dern's Diane Evans stole every scene she was in, even when she was trying to steal people's souls. —ES

laura dern in the tale
HBO

4. The Tale (2018)

Dern's work in Jennifer Fox's harrowing The Tale would probably be more widely recognized as one of the 2010s' defining performances if the film had been released in theaters rather than on HBO, where it came and went after a buzzy Sundance premiere. That said, Dern is extraordinary in Fox's piece of memoir, playing a woman who unpacks her memories and comes to realize the extent of the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her horseback riding instructor and the woman who helped groom her for him. Dern has the difficult task of playing an otherwise well-adjusted adult confronting her past and a perception of herself that she had long buried. —EZ

laura dern in wild at heart
The Samuel Goldwyn Company

3. Wild at Heart (1990)

After starring in 1986's Blue Velvet, Dern teamed up with David Lynch for a role that was the opposite of the naive schoolgirl Sandy. Joined by none other than Nicolas Cage in a snakeskin blazer, Wild at Heart follows two lovers, Sailor (Cage) and Lula (Dern), who go on the run after Lula's disapproving mother tries to get Sailor killed. Dern gyrates and coos, a femme fatale who'll do anything to stand by her man. "Wild" might be too on the nose to describe it, but Dern radiates sensuality with her light southern lilt. It's a great reflection of just how campy and fun Dern can be with the right role. —Kerensa Cadenas

laura dern in citizen ruth
Miramax Films

2. Citizen Ruth (1996)

In the years immediately following Jurassic Park, Dern was mostly working in TV movies and guest stints, but Alexander Payne's 1996 indie film about a woman caught in the middle of an abortion debate proves her talent is meant for the big screen. The film—which, of course, is still as relevant as ever—stars Dern as the wonderfully named Ruth Stoops. Ruth is a paint-huffing ne'er-do-well who unwittingly becomes the face of an abortion dispute after her latest arrest finds her facing charges for endangering a fetus. Over the course of the movie, she's passed around between Evangelicals and abortion-rights activists, each trying to use her for their own agenda. The bothsidesism of the movie doesn't totally hold up, but Dern's work certainly does. It's a portrait of a woman who never knew she had a choice, is finally offered one, and realizes she doesn't actually give a shit either way. —EZ

laura dern in enlightened, amy jellicoe
HBO

1. Enlightened (2011–2013)

If you ever need a cry, put on the Todd Haynes-directed episode of Enlightened titled "All I Ever Wanted." Perhaps it's the melancholy direction and—by this point, in the show's second season—Dern and Luke Wilson's lived-in performances as they spend time reconnecting in their relationship. Mike White's pre-White Lotus tour de force, which premiered in 2011, follows Amy Jellicoe (Dern), a total mess who "finds herself" by way of a Hawaiian wellness retreat after a personal and professional meltdown. The HBO show nabbed a small but fervent audience at the time and now gets tossed around as something that was way ahead of its time. That's because the pairing of White's spiky comedy and Dern's manic inflections are a perfect match. Amy is impossibly selfish, yet you can't help but root for her misguided activism as she navigates her alcoholic ex-husband, returns to her toxic workplace, and moves back in with her mother (Diane Ladd). As with any Dern role, she puts absolutely everything into it. If you aren't sure of that, just watch the opening minutes of the pilot, where she forces open an elevator door with sheer, animalistic rage. —KC

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