Laura Dern has revealed her university forced her to drop out after she secured a role in David Lynch ’s 1986 film Blue Velvet . The Jurassic Park actor, 57, starred in the noir-horror as a police chief’s daughter who develops an interest in a university student ( Kyle MacLachlan ) after he comes to her father having discovered a human ear in a vacant lot in their hometown in North Carolina. Dern revealed she’s still angry that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) wouldn’t let her continue studying if she took the role – yet now requires film students to watch Blue Velvet as part of their master’s programme.
Speaking on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast hosted by Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson, Dern said: “I was 17, so excited to get into UCLA. I was there for two days, and I had auditioned and got offered the role in Blue Velvet .” The Little Women star explained she was “ecstatic” about getting a role in the film as she “worshipped” Lynch, who had already been nominated for an Oscar for his film The Elephant Man six years earlier.
When Dern went to the head of her university department to request a leave of absence to take on the Blue Velvet role, she was told she could “absolutely not” have the time away from her studies. “I said, ‘I have this opportunity and he said, ‘Well, I’ll look at the script if you want to give me the script, but, you know, you’re not going to get a leave of absence. It’s not going to hap.