LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Bruce Dern has been on camera for more than 50 years. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and he finally added an Emmy nod to his list of honours.
Dern was nominated for his guest-starring role on HBO’s “Big Love.”
“I’m just surprised, I can only tell you that,” the 75-year-old actor said. “It was a series I was proud to be a part of, but I didn’t think I had that much to do in it… To get nominated like this in this category – or in any category – is a surprise and a gratification.”
Dern said he was delighted that Emmy voters noticed his role as cranky Frank Harlow, a character he has played since 2006 but who only appears on a few episodes each season. Dern said the quirky part parallels his movie career.
“I never became a big movie star or anything like that,” he said. “I starred in a lot of movies, but I was probably the fifth or sixth choice in a lot of them that I got.”
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He said his daughter, Laura Dern, has followed a similar professional path: “Because of a couple of early performances in her career, she got a seat at the table for the rest of her life.”
Dern said he gave his daughter two pieces of advice when she started her acting career – tips that he follows to this day.
“There are two things that are essential,” he recalled. “One of them is you’ve got to learn to dance – and that means not dancing lessons but dancing around the problems on the set every day, which are never personal but we always take them as personal. And two is to take roles that put you on the edge. Take roles that are risky.
“I’ve been prone to that my entire career,” he continued, “and this character, Frank in ‘Big Love,’ was extremely risky. You never knew what he was going to do or who he was.”
Dern lost the Emmy to Paul McCrane, who won the guest actor trophy for “Harry’s Law” at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmy ceremony, set to air Saturday on ReelzChannel. But with five decades on camera – and his next project uniting him on screen with his daughter – Dern still feels like a winner.
He is extremely proud that he, Laura Dern and Diane Ladd earned side-by-side stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame – the first family so honoured. (Ladd is Bruce Dern’s ex-wife and Laura Dern’s mother.) The three are also the first family to all have been nominated for Academy Awards, he said.
And they’re about to reunite on screen, he said, in a film called “Heart’s Location”: “And that’s the first time Laura and I will ever work together!”
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AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/APSandy .
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