Diane Ladd 'dissuaded' Laura Dern from acting

Diane Ladd said she initially discouraged daughter Laura Dern from walking down the acting path, as she wanted her to choose medicine or law as a profession.

Speaking to Live with Kelly & Mark about their upcoming book Honey, Baby, Mine, written by the mother-daughter duo.

"I fell in love with it," Dern told hosts when she performed as an extra in her mother's movie Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, directed by Martin Scorsese.

"Scorsese let me be an extra, sitting at the counter watching these amazing artists work together,” she added.

Following, Ladd remembered The Jurrasic Park actor told her about her actor’s aspirations.

"I said no," Ladd continued. "I dissuaded her. I said, 'No, honey, no, no, no.' Look, be a lawyer, be a doctor. I said, 'If you're going to save somebody's life as a doctor, nobody's going to care if your chin points when you cry or your butt is too big.' She fooled me. She said, 'Oh, mommy, you encourage everybody, you say [to] use the gifts God gave you,' and she said, 'If God gave me a gift, let me use it now, I'll be so bored with it later I won't even want to do that.'"

Meanwhile, Dern proved to become one of the most successful actors of her time, netting three Oscar nominations while bagging one in 2020 for playing a divorce attorney in The Marriage Story.

"Some people say, 'Never meet your heroes,'" Dern added amid her Oscars acceptance speech. "But sometimes, if you're blessed, you get them as your parents."