But it was such a personal, intimate, beautiful thing to share that kind of knowing and bringing it into this professional space, but also the boundaries of that professional space that it's sort of this unspoken language. Mom describes the whole crew looking at us as if we were nuts. And I looked at her and felt I knew the emotion and the pain she was expressing in the scene, both very personal, both never discussed, but we just know each other so well.Īnd so at that moment, we started laughing hysterically right after this big crying scene.

And he said, 'Cut!' and mom describes us pulling away and her looking in my eyes and realizing that she knew exactly what had brought up the emotion in me. The camera rolls and David Lynch called 'Action!' and it's very emotional and I'm crying in her arms. She remembered me preparing for the scene at one end of the set and her at the other, both doing our work, both having trained separately as professionals, not engaged in that together, and then coming together to do this very emotional scene. My mom talked about the joy she had remembering the first time we worked together on Wild at Heart, and we had to do this very emotional scene.

Isabella Rossellini, left, David Lynch, Laura Dern and Diane Ladd laugh during a photocall for Wild at Heart at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990.

Wild at heart book preview