How Diane Ladd Coped with Tragedy After 18-Month-Old Daughter Died in Pool Accident: 'You Will Never Get Over That'
- - How Diane Ladd Coped with Tragedy After 18-Month-Old Daughter Died in Pool Accident: 'You Will Never Get Over That'
Eric AnderssonNovember 4, 2025 at 2:46 AM
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Diane Ladd in 1975. -
Diane Ladd, who died on Monday, Nov. 3 at 89, faced tragedy in 1962 when Diane Elizabeth Dern, the daughter she shared with Bruce Dern, died in an accident
The 18-month-old fell into a pool and hit her head while she was in the care of a babysitter
"You will never get over that," Ladd, who later welcomed daughter Laura Dern, said in 2023
Diane Ladd faced tragedy when her 18-month-old daughter died in an accident in 1962.
"She fell into the pool. She hit her head and knocked herself out. And it all happened instantly. And she died, and you will never get over that,” Ladd told CBS News in 2023, two years before her own death on Monday, Nov. 3 at age 89.
The death of Diane Elizabeth Dern, who was in the care of a babysitter at the time, took a toll on Ladd and her then-husband, actor Bruce Dern, who had only wed two years prior after meeting on the off-Broadway play Orpheus Rising.
“It was awful,'' the Nebraska actor, now 89, told PEOPLE in 1990. ''It was very, very tough. I don't think Diane and I had a chance after that.”
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Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern in 1960.
And yet they stayed together for a few more years, and welcomed another daughter, Laura Dern, in 1967.
"We suffered the tragedy of our daughter's death together and thought another child would help us, but we were so bruised," the Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore actress told Parade in 1992.
Two months after welcoming Laura, Ladd and Bruce separated.
Laura Dern/Instagram
Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd and daughter Laura Dern.
Ladd continued to be haunted by her daughter’s death for years. “I don't care what you say to yourself. I don't care who says what. The child is not supposed to die before the parent,” she told CBS News.
Ladd and Laura — who followed in her parents' footsteps to become an actor as well — didn’t speak about the tragedy until many years later. "And I had not asked because I thought I was gonna hurt you,” Laura said to her mother in a joint interview in 2023.
But the two began to have deep — and healing — conversations after Ladd was told she might have only six months to live when she was diagnosed with a lung disease called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in 2018.
The toughest conversation they had, both agreed, was about Diane's death. "I didn't want to put [Laura] through that,” Ladd told PEOPLE in 2023. “But I wasn't doing her a favor by not sharing that, and I didn't understand that as a mother.”
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Diane Ladd and Laura Dern in 2015.
“I think that was the hardest conversation to talk to her about that experience and the actuality of what it felt like and what her father and I went through. We were starving actors with no money to pull any shades down to keep the ugliness out. It was a horrendous time in our lives,” Ladd continued.
Ultimately, Laura said the conversation was a positive thing: “It was amazing, amazing experience. It's changed our relationship, I feel, in the feeling that we can talk about everything.”
Laura confirmed her mother's death in a Nov. 3 statement obtained by PEOPLE. "My amazing hero and my profound gift of a mother, Diane Ladd, passed with me beside her this morning, at her home in Ojai, Calif.," she said.
"She was the greatest daughter, mother, grandmother, actress, artist and empathetic spirit that only dreams could have seemingly created. We were blessed to have her. She is flying with her angels now,” she added.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
