In Laura Dern's cinematic universe, as in real life, saintly schoolgirls are capable of conducting secret lives and chain-smoking tarts can also be pure hearts. In her earliest work--Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Foxes--Dern is just the daughter of actors Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern, elbowing her way onto a movie set. By 1985 she begins to exhibit her peculiar touch, in Smooth Talk, as a sulking teenager who disposes of her virginity with equal parts zeal and trepidation. Dern's bits were flawless in two David Lynch films. In Blue Velvet, clothed and chaste, she showed a remarkable tolerance for weirdness. Unzipped, in Wild at Heart, she displayed enough confidence to surprise her fans. In Rambling Rose, which won Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for both her and her mother, she made unchecked horniness seem beguilingly innocent.

Her showbiz reputation has become that of the self-created siren. It is as if she willed herself, and moviegoers, into believing in her sexiness. Right after Dern finished Steven Spielberg's upcoming Jurassic Park, Margy Rochlin spoke with her about her new profile in Hollywood. "Laura appreciates the conversational detour," says Rochlin. "Her responses may contain an observation about sex, love, global politics or human behavior. In fact, her only self-conscious moment occurred after a rambling discourse about her fascination with world religion. 'Um, I hope I'm not coming off like a cliché spiritual woo-woo person,' Dern said. 'Because I'm not, really....'"

Q 1

PLAYBOY: At some point, you made the change from playing the girl next door in a sundress to a sexpot in a halter top. Which are you?

Laura Dern: The wild girl and the innocent virgin are in all of us. I'm most proud of Rambling Rose because I think both types of girls are in that character. That to me is what's sexy.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: In feminist circles much has been made of the male gaze. When is it all right for men to look?

Laura Dern: When I was shooting a film in the Mojave desert, we went to a Tex-Mex club. I was wearing this little red-velvet top and tight jeans and cowboy boots and I got in the middle of the floor and went insane! The music was great and I was surrounded by cowboys. If it had been me alone at a club--forget about it. There were guys leering at me, but somehow it was abstract. I felt completely free, really safe. And I enjoyed that everybody was just looking at me. But yesterday I was wearing a pair of tight workout shorts and a leotard. And I came out of a parking lot and these valet parkers went "Wooooo!" and were just staring at my ass. I wanted to kill. That really pissed me off. As opposed to, "God, she's pretty," there was a sense of disgust in the air, like, "Look at that fucking slut." It was gross. You know, sometimes it's really fun to act like a bimbo. But it's fun to act like a bimbo only when people know that you really aren't one.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: You were raised by your mother and your grandmother, both of whom are from the South. What are the privileges of being a Southern belle?

Laura Dern: Southern women have grace. They're great listeners, which makes them gracious hosts. My grandmother loves to listen to everybody's stories. She taught me that there's always a dichotomy in people. There's always repression and sexuality, kindness and calculation--there's no person who's just one thing. She's a Catholic woman. Doesn't like cuss words. Very proper. But at the same time, anybody who meets her--and she's seventy-four years old--says, "Boy, she's so much like Marilyn Monroe." She's a doll. She loves to flirt with men and she wraps them around her finger. She's a little sexpot and she makes wild comments every once in a while. I took her to see Mambo Kings one weekend. Forget about it. Every time Armand Assante appeared on the screen, she was, like, "Wooooo!" Yet she goes to church every Sunday and is very straight. I love that about her.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: We understand that you meditate. What's the hardest thing to get out of your mind when you sit down to meditate?

Laura Dern: Everything. I am not gifted at sitting down twice a day and giving myself thirty to forty minutes just to sit. One week I'm completely dedicated to it and the next week I'm crazed. The hardest thing for me to get out of my mind is what I've forgotten to do. Unless I'm going through a major crisis, it doesn't even get into emotional pain. It's just the real piddly stuff. Ultimately, it floats away and you can focus on yourself.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: In preparation for your role as a blind teenager in Mask, you spent some time discovering the world with your eyes closed. How have you applied what you learned in Mask to your own life?

Laura Dern: It was definitely true that I was nicer and people were nicer to me. It was because I had to be more in touch with what I was feeling. When you're standing there with your eyes closed and you have to feel if something is in front of you, then you're going to be obviously much more in tune with your and other people's emotions. If I had my eyes closed and I heard you say, "I'm really sad right now," well, all I have to focus on is what I'm hearing you say. Whereas, when my eyes are open and you say to me, "I'm really sad right now," it's, like, "Oh, God, I'm really sorry, but there's the telephone and it reminds me of someone I forgot to call." Or I'm thinking that I'm really thirsty or hungry. There's so much else that I'm taking in. There's much more clarity with your eyes closed. Also, you just have to trust that people will protect you. Once, we were going up in the mountains on horseback and I was on cliffs and the guy who was working with me said, "Just remember, the horse is not going to take you anywhere he doesn't want to go." I had to trust that the horse would lead me carefully through these mountains. It was scary, but it was also an incredible experience. It made me think about what an amazing exercise it would be to blindfold yourself for twenty-four hours and trust your lover or mate to take care of you. I wonder how much it would alter the relationship. I'm sure it would. But that's a whole other story. [In a low, suggestive voice] "Blindfold me, baby."