Laura Dern’s Quarantine Has Involved Movie Marathons and Mother Nature

From Woman's Day

For award-winning actress Laura Dern, quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic has meant she's had more time to focus on family and appreciate the little things. Since Dern’s production schedules were put on hold as a result of the ongoing public health crisis, she’s been at home in Los Angeles with her two kids... and sometimes her mother. “It’s been healing, and scary,” she tells Woman’s Day. “We’ve just hunkered down.”

The actress says she feels lucky to be in California, where she has access to outdoor trails for hiking and lots of fresh air. “For friends who were in New York City in the thick of it, it was devastating,” she says. “So I count our blessings when we’re able to get outside in the fresh air, because nature has been a saving grace.” In late March, Dern made headlines for sharing cute, socially distanced photos of herself and Big Little Lies cast-mate Reese Witherspoon out on a hike.

When she’s been inside, she and her family have been expanding upon their already extensive film education. “We made a list in quarantine of classics that inspired us,” she says. Her teenage-aged kids wrote down movies they’ve always been interested in, and Dern added in some she thought were must-sees they couldn't go without. “Our family is a family of actors on my side, and their dad’s side is all musicians,” she says. “So sharing films and music has been very special.” So far they’ve watched all of The Godfather films, as well as some movies starring her parents, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd.

Dern’s family has also been educating themselves on a number of pressing social justice issues in America. “We’ve been reading a lot about race in America,” she says, sharing that some of her favorites were Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy and The New York Times article “My Body Is A Confederate Monument” by Caroline Randall Williams. “Everyone has to read it,” she says. “It was really insightful and amazing.”

As Dern prepares to travel to the U.K. to continue filming the upcoming Jurassic Park film Jurassic World: Dominion, she’s dealing with the same feelings many people have been forced to navigate as they return to work in the midst of a pandemic that shows no signs of letting up. In fact, 21 states have paused their re-opening efforts, or re-closed, as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States has surged. Currently, American tourists are banned from visiting the E.U. due to the rise in U.S. coronavirus cases.

“I think we all feel the same way,” she says. “We’re eager to work, we’re excited to work, we’re scared to work. We don’t know what that looks like, we don’t know what the 'new normal] is, and it feels uncertain.” Despite the uncertainty, Dern says she feels “blessed” to have a job she loves and to be part of the film industry, which has been a large factor in her family’s overall experience during quarantine. “I know watching films and TV in this time has been such a gorgeous resource, so I do love being an audience as much as I love making stories,” she says. “So I will look forward to making them again, when the time is right.”

As for one of her most beloved roles of late, when asked what her Big Little Lies character Renata Klein would be doing during quarantine, Dern laughed. “I think what’s so delicious about playing a character for more than just a film is you do start to feel their responses to a thing,” she says. “Renata had quite a rude awakening in Season 2, and I think because of that she’s become more compassionate to the rest of the word. I think Renata would be in the thick of it now. I think she would use her power and her influence to wake up to a lot of new things. But unfortunately, she would also be worrying how she looked through all of it, and making sure her quarantine attire was still chic.”

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