Laura Dern has starred in some pretty huge films in her time, not least Jurassic Park. However, ask your casual film fan if they know who she is, and chances are they'll look at you blankly. This is very sad, as she quite possibly the most gifted actress of her generation. Few actors can achieve the depth and diversity that she has shown throughout her career, and her frequent collaborator David Lynch knows this better than anyone. He granted her the role of an innocent teen in Blue Velvet and a sexed-up runaway in Wild At Heart, but it was her star turn in his chaotic narrative deconstruction Inland Empire that succeeded in showing off her talents better than anything else she'd been in previously. Dern effectively plays more roles than it is possible to count in the film. OK, it's only two characters, but both of those characters have depths that are practically unprecedented in cinema. She flits from persona to persona, and every single one is infused with absolute believability. Whatever your opinion of Lynch's film, Dern's performance manages to keep it grounded despite its unmoored structure. She didn't get the Oscar nomination that Lynch lobbied for, but her performance has gone down in cult cinema history as one of the greatest of all time.
