Laura Dern
Born: February 10 1967
Where: Los Angeles, California, USA
The Oscar-nominated actress made her breakthrough as Lula Pace opposite Nicolas Cage's Sailor Ripley in Wild At Heart.
She subsequently reached a wider audience as Dr Ellie Sattler in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park and as as free-spirited housemaid in Rambling Rose.
The daughter of actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, Dern appeared with her mum as an extra in White Lightning in 1973 and the following year in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.
She began studying at the Lee Strasberg Institute at the age of nine and landed a bit part in 1980's Foxes.
Dern first played a troubled pregnant teen in 1984's Teachers and was so convincing as a blind girl in Mask that many audience members believed she really was sightless.
In 1986, she was cast by David Lynch in Blue Velvet and she re-teamed with the maverick director for Wild At Heart in 1990.
In 1991, again acting with real life mum Diane Ladd, she won critical acclaim as Rose, an orphan whose presence disrupts a 1930s Southern family in Rambling Rose.
Dern received a Best Actress Oscar nomination while Ladd snagged a Best Supporting Actress nod, making them the first mother-daughter team cited in the same year for the same film.
In 1993, she won a new legion of fans as Sam Neill's dinosaur-hunting wife in Jurassic Park.
After filming, she began a long on-off relationship with co-star Jeff Goldblum, getting engaged in 1994, then calling it off two years later.
Clint Eastwood cast her alongside Kevin Costner in the drama A Perfect World and she then starred in Alexander Payne's Citizen Ruth.
She was Emmy-nominated for playing the woman who caused Ellen DeGeneres to sensationally come out as a lesbian.
Off screen, she fell for Billy Bob Thornton only to find herself unceremoniously dumped - "like sudden death" when he met Angelina Jolie.
"I left our home to go and make a movie and while I was away my boyfriend got married, and I never heard from him again," she said.
Subsequent appearances have been sporadic and include the drama October Sky, Jurassic Park III and the frantic comedy Novocaine.
In 2004, she starred alongside Mark Ruffalo, Peter Krause and Naomi Watts in the marital drama We Don't Live Here Anymore.
