Laura Dern dropped out of college to make Blue Velvet

Last Updated on August 12, 2024

She wore bluuueeeee velvettttt – but she didn’t wear a cap and gown along with it. Laura Dern spent a whopping two days at UCLA before dropping out to play Sandy Williams in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Just imagine how much Pabst Blue Ribbon she missed out on in the dorm!

Appearing on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, Laura Dern remembered being excited to land the part in Blue Velvet but running into issues with the university, who rebuked her request to take time off to work on the film. Dern insisted she would do all the required work, which the department head was reluctant to approve. “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 happen. It’s not a medical emergency.’” The next day, UCLA officially refused her request, telling her to leave college over a script like Blue Velvet’s was “insane.”

Laura Dern added, “I will just end by saying after my two days, today, if you want to get a masters in film at that school, when you write a thesis there are three movies you are required to study. And you know what one of them is,” she said, referring to the 1986 film. Whether this is true or not we have yet to confirm, but it certainly has a better shot than Grizzly II: Revenge.

Even prior to Blue Velvet, Laura Dern had already been getting her movie and TV career going – no doubt in part to being the daughter of Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, her first movie being a small bit in Ladd’s White Lightning – but that she still wanted to pursue other interests, studying psychology and journalism, is quite admirable. And it’s apparently a good thing that UCLA was so finicky because Blue Velvet made her career, even earning her an Independent Spirit Award nomination. Dern would go on to work with Lynch on Wild at Heart, Inland Empire and Twin Peaks: The Return.

Today, Blue Velvet stands as one of the greatest films ever; it still divides viewers in its depictions of violence and abuse, but it is an enigmatic work from one of our most unique visionaries.