Laura Dern has appeared on the Venice Film Festival red carpet with her daughter Jaya.
The Lonely Planet star shares Jaya, 20, and her older brother Ellery, 24, with her ex-husband musician Ben Harper.
Here’s everything we know about Laura Dern’s life with her two adult children.
LAURA DERN’S MARRIAGE TO BEN HARPER
In 2000, Laura met musician Ben Harper at one of his concerts.
The couple tied the knot five years later in a backyard ceremony. During their time together, they welcomed a son, Ellery, and a daughter, Jaya, into the world.
After five years of marriage, Ben filed for divorce from Laura in 2010, citing irreconcilable differences, according to People.
At the time, a source close to the couple told Us Weekly that the ‘Steal My Kisses’ singer was “just not into” the Big Little Lies star anymore.
“The marriage became a chore — it lost passion and he got bored. He loves their kids and loves her, but wasn’t in love with her anymore,” the source said. “He wants someone in the music world who he’ll have more in common with.”
The couple briefly reconciled in 2012, but Laura soon filed a response to Ben’s papers and the divorce was finalised in September 2013. The former couple shared joint custody of their two kids until they reached adulthood.
In 2020, Laura said the divorce informed her role in Netflix’s Marriage Story.
“As [director Noah Baumbach] first said about the story when we first talked about it, he said, ‘I want to tell a love story where endings are not failures.’ And that really moved me and struck me deeply,” she said, pointing to her own amicable separation and that of her parents.
“So to my amazing divorced parents, and my amazing step parents, and my amazing children—who came from love despite an ending in a marriage—we’re so privileged to redefine what family looks like.”
WHO ARE LAURA DERN’S TWO CHILDREN?
Laura and Ben’s son Ellery Walker was born in 2001.
Shortly after he was born, Ellery had to undergo emergency surgery.
“My son had a surgery at birth and it was life-threatening,” the Jurassic Park star told Refinery29 in 2017. “We were in terror. I was sitting in rooms with families who didn’t have as much ease knowing if they could get health care or not.”
Ellery now works as a model and a musician. After making his runway debut at New York Fashion Week in 2018 at Raf Simon’s Calvin Klein show, he released his first EP, Lost at Sea, under the alias Crazy Mik in 2021.
“He graduated, he’s doing amazing and making incredible music now,” Laura told Ellen DeGeneres in 2022.
Ellery’s younger sister Jaya was born in 2004.
She’s hoping to follow her mother and her grandmother, Diane Ladd, into acting.
“There is something very moving about it,” Laura said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, adding, “And maybe if she does, we’ll end up having the privilege of working together.”
The mum-of-two has also opened up in the past about how Jaya’s activism has taught her to start becoming more involved herself.
“She’s teaching me in a really profound way, by modelling: ‘You don’t wait for the country to change; you start the revolution right here,’ ” she explained in 2017.
“[Around the election,] it was amazing to watch [her] generation, particularly girls, want to become involved. It is oddly a very exciting time, as a mother, to watch a generation of girls feel empowered in a way that we weren’t even.”
In the past, Laura has opened up about the reality of being a single parent.
“On good days, I am kind enough to remember that there are growing pains, and it is all overwhelming and not easy or always fun,” she told Modern Luxury‘s Boston Common magazine in 2019.
“On the hard days, it’s stressful and there is too much going on as a single parent — and it can be hard to carve out a minute for yourself,” the actress continued. “I have never had anybody else bully me in my single parenting life. I am lucky to have champions around me, but I can definitely do it to myself.”
The same year, she told InStyle that raising her kids alone made her feel like she deserved to be successful and make money.
“This is the first time in my life that I am being ambitious because I am a single parent. Raising kids gave me enough street cred to feel like I deserved the right to make money,” she said.
“This moment in my life is so sexy and freeing because I’ve had many relationships, I’ve had a marriage, I have my amazing children, so I’m not hiding who I am to get somebody who is willing to have kids or be married.”
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