Laura Dern emerges from the pitch dark. She is 19 years old, dressed as Sandy Williams in a pink short-sleeved dress, a hydrangea of blond bangs protruding from her forehead. It’s 1986 and Dern has appeared in several commercially successful films, including Mask, but it’s David Lynch’s Blue Velvet that functions as a debutante ball for a woman who was born Hollywood royalty. Under normal circumstances, it might feel tiresome to explain that Laura Dern is the daughter of Bruce Dern (himself a great-nephew of Archibald MacLeish) and Diane Ladd (herself a cousin of Tennessee Williams), that she is the goddaughter of Shelley Winters and one of the only actors working today with Coppola-level California roots. But these are not normal circumstances. Because Dern’s childhood, a swirling mass of famous faces like Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, and Gena Rowlands, is not a requisite mention but an inextricable part of who she is—responsible for her passions and her pitfalls and the key to one of the most elastic actresses of her generation.

“I have never spent time with boring people,” she says, as if confessing to never having entered a Walmart. “I’ve never once been at a meal where I’ve thought, Oh, this person is a bore.”

It’s 11 A.M. on a Sunday and we are the only two diners in the cavernous Viale dei Romani restaurant. Somewhere, a cappuccino is being made. Dern is set to attend a reception for Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma this afternoon. She has on a floral dress with a keyhole front, a cape-like white coat, and carries a tiny teal bag. She looks like a glamorous Easter egg—and kind of sounds like one. She is animated, funny, charming, and impeccably mannered. “My family’s from the South,” she says, reminding me of her Mississippi bloodline. “I’m a hugger!” She also speaks deliberately, protectively, with the cadence of a seasoned professional accustomed to delivering whole paragraphs.

Over the course of the two days I spend with her, I witness dual Dern engines: the primary one being that of a deeply genuine person, the secondary one being that of a person with a marrow-level awareness of sounding as genuine as she is. This is common for actors, particularly very smart ones. They pepper the occasional curse word or easy joke into a stream of articulate, unobjectionable ideas (the environment is a priority, minority voices are vital, sexual harassment is bad, gun laws are too lax) as you slide into the uncanny valley of conversation. This is control, mind you, not fakeness. But Laura Dern is really good at it. We are in the middle of getting right to it, chatting about romance, when our food arrives. She plucks my cell phone from the table. At first I think she has confused it for her cell phone, but instead she lifts the microphone to her face so my audio will be seamless. Seasoned.

“I was raised by people who really honor nonjudgment and empathy, and that’s been an amazing inspiration as an artist,” she explains, “but it’s not the best once you become an adult and choose relationships, especially intimate relationships, when you’re raised to be boundary-free. You get to realize that the art doesn’t necessarily match the individual. I do have difficulty with that separation.”

Those of us with less adorned childhoods are saddled with similar issues (boundaries, self-worth, ego—therapy’s greatest hits). I reason that if anyone should’ve been magically inoculated against deifying creativity, it’s Laura Dern. After all, she tells wonderfully down-to-earth stories about her parents and their friends (“It was a privilege to grow up around dames”), about Winters throwing on jeans and a mink coat for a movie premiere. And while her romances have been starry, they’ve also been civilian-like in duration. She’s never gone for the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it L.A. engagement. She reportedly dated Kyle MacLachlan for four years, Jeff Goldblum for another four, and was engaged to Billy Bob Thornton (until he unceremoniously left her for Angelina Jolie). She was later married for eight years to Ben Harper, with whom she has two children, Ellery, 17, and Jaya, 14. The “couple of crushes” she has now include “a long-standing one. I met him when I was 20, but I don’t think he’s aware. He’s a filmmaker. A genius—but a kind genius.”(“I’ve never had something that wasn’t the real deal,” she tells me another time, “but real deals break your heart, too.”)

I offer her a thought experiment: All the men you’ve ever loved are trapped in a room together. What do they make of each other? “Well, how big is the room?” she asks, laughing. “No, it would be pretty joyful. And it would also be incredibly aggressive toward a couple of individuals. I have a bit of a mafia who know who’s been there for me and who hasn’t. It would be obvious. But all of these relationships, like my relationship with my kids or my friends or the characters I play—they teach me so much about myself, about how to use my voice, about how to channel anger and accept myself when the rest of the world says, ‘You’re too complicated, I don’t want to be at the party with you.’”

Our visions of ourselves die hard, but sometime between playing Reese Witherspoon’s mother in 2014’s Wild (after which the two became incredibly close) and Renata Klein (co-starring with Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman) in HBO’s Big Little Lies, the world decided that not only did it want to be at the party with Laura Dern but that the party was for her. The Internet has rather cheesily dubbed our current times as the “Dernaissance.” But point taken. Her performance as Renata earned her both an Emmy and a Golden Globe. The second season of Big Little Lies, coming this spring, will feature more of that Dern-patented Complex Woman the world is finally catching up to.

Indeed, if you Google “Laura Dern” and “complex,” your eyes will burn out on the results. When her career started to take off, she was offered “tons of traditional stuff”—she heard the siren song of John Hughes, but her parents were wary of her being “hurled into celebrity.” Much has been made of Dern’s petitioning for parental emancipation as a teenager, but she says she did it for professional reasons, not to run away from home. “The judge said to her, ‘Do you make a living wage?’” recalls Bruce Dern. “I was sitting in the back and she asked me, ‘Do I make a living wage?’ And I said, ‘Yes, you make more than $22,000 a year.’”

Her parents encouraged her to seek out character-driven roles over ingénues, “to build a body of work so that I would end up having my most exciting years when I was a grown woman.”

To say this philosophy has paid off is an understatement—not only with David Lynch, with whom she has an enviable Sunday-night tradition at the Chateau Marmont (“we go for fried chicken, and you can sit in the corner and smoke”), but with Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Alexander Payne, and now Greta Gerwig, with whom she just finished wrapping production as Marmee in the remake of Little Women.

Over the years, this love of character has seeped into Dern’s root system. She is a fearless actor, which is Hollywood for “not afraid of looking ugly,” but in her case, the fearlessness goes beyond the superficial. She has created a cottage industry out of playing deeply flawed, funny, cringe-inducing, infuriating anti-heroines. When she first read the script of Citizen Ruth, the 1996 black comedy about a paint-huffing vagrant whose pregnancy becomes a cri de coeur for pro-life and pro-choice fanatics, she’d “never laughed so hard” in her life. Her roles may not always play for laughs, but look closely and you’ll see Dern has comedic timing in a league with her hero, Lucille Ball. It was Dern’s expressive eyes Ellen DeGeneres stared into when she came out during Ellen’s watershed “Puppy Episode,” after which no one would hire Dern for a year. (“She can play anything,” says DeGeneres, who calls Dern a “brilliant” actress. “She can play a straight role, pardon the pun, and she’s good at comedy. I knew she’d be the kind of person to open up Ellen Morgan.”) Dern and her mother both received Oscar nominations for the Depression-era drama Rambling Rose. In HBO’s brilliant but short-lived Enlightened, Dern played Amy Jellicoe, a faux-woke would-be activist navigating office politics. The role won her a Golden Globe and is being re-mourned in the midst of what feels like a tectonic shift for “difficult” women across all industries.

“If Enlightened were on right now, given what’s happening in the world, every woman would say, ‘I am Amy Jellicoe,’ but when it was on,” says Dern, “male journalists would interview me and relate, and female journalists would ask: How do you feel, playing such an unattractive character?”

Perhaps the ultimate Dern-vs.-The-World role is the one we’re about to see her in again. According to Dern, a second season of Big Little Lies will feature more real-estate porn (Dern’s own Santa Monica estate is homier: “It feels like a tree house. Well, a midcentury tree house”), “further intimacy in how we get to know these women” (which is Hollywood for “I’m not telling you squat about squat”), and Meryl Streep.

The all-star cast helped manifest a second season of a show that was meant to have been a single-season series. And they’ve become close in the process. “We have each other’s backs, and there’s obviously a mentoring aspect to it with Zoë [Kravitz] and Shai [Shailene Woodley]. But we’re all equal in terms of contributing ideas, and we’re very, very bonded,” says Kidman. “We’ve worked together for so long now, but we’ve also navigated an enormous amount together. When we’re in Monterey, it’s just always ‘Where are we going to dinner, what are we doing after?’”

It’s safe to assume Dern will continue to make Renata, the highest-strung high-powered mom in Monterey, enjoyable to watch not because we love to hate her but because we grow to love her. Dern has a surgical ability to reveal the hurt beneath a character’s anger, to play women “who have a longing to be heard or to hear themselves.” She attributes the nuance of Renata’s flaws to director Jean-Marc Vallée and writer David E. Kelley, but I have to point out what she won’t—it’s Dern who has to carry it home.

“I’ve never gravitated towards scripts where there’s profound change. I’m interested in incremental growth. . . . And it’s so obvious to me how vulnerable Renata is because you can feel her being like”—she punches her palm—”You’re. Going. To. Listen. To. Me. Nobody has to work that hard if they’re really being listened to.” Dern has some familiarity with Renata’s DNA. There’s the childhood of being “seen and championed” but “not really heard.” And she too is a high-powered working mom. She sometimes too has to miss performances and swim meets, and “not being there is excruciating.” But this fluency comes at a price.

“Marmee is loving and only speaks to impart wisdom and revolutionize change. Renata wants to do those things but doesn’t know how to say it without rage. . . . She’s someone that always lives outside the club. I feel such sisterhood with the girls—we deeply love each other, and for Reese and Nicole and I particularly, all having done this since we were teenagers and never having acted with so many women, it’s amazing—but Renata isn’t the easiest. I go to work every day and I bring to it the idea that I don’t fit in.”

Vallée, who has known Dern since they did Wild, calls her skill “magic” and explains just how infectious her mischievous energy can be: “She’s like a little kid. One of us will suggest something and go, ‘Let’s not tell the others.’ She loves it so much because we’re going to surprise everyone else, including the crew. Remember when Renata’s friend comes over to gossip? And Renata turns and screams to scare the shit out of her? We didn’t tell anyone. I probably should’ve told the D.P. because he almost dropped the camera. Everybody had a heart attack except Laura and myself. I couldn’t stop laughing.”

Another recent role, for which she did a particularly deep dive, was HBO’s The Tale, the brutal story of a woman forced to re-evaluate what her 13-year-old self had deemed a consensual relationship with an older man. The Tale dredged up a lot of Dern’s own memories, ones she had long suppressed or put in neat narrative boxes.

“I started making movies as an 11-year-old, so I was on location at 13, which is a different thing. I remember every compromised situation,” she says. “I was a child, and adults took advantage of me or tried, and I justified the behavior as me misunderstanding it.”

This leads to a discussion of the necessity of Time’s Up, #MeToo, and beyond. But as important as all this awareness and change is, from personal safety to equal pay, she’s also aware that the hashtags can put undue pressure on assault survivors to join the chorus. Those who stay silent can feel self-conscious or cowardly. “No one has to speak about their experience,” she says. “It’s also remarkably brave to sit in your own home and look in the mirror and say: this is the truth of what happened. I will tell you I experienced everything barring assault. I mean, there were a million of these circumstances where . . . What director or casting director needs a 13-year-old to go to the Chateau to audition in a room, sitting on a bed beside the director, to read a scene together alone? You just don’t create that scenario. There was behavior that was definitely the worst kind of behavior that somehow I got myself out of or someone stopped it.”

“Or,” I posit, “it happened because you were protected and these men were testing their limits.”

“My dad killed John Wayne,” she quips. “He might kill you, too. The tragedy of my life is that when things were in the gray, I didn’t know they were wrong. I didn’t know I was entitled to say something as simple as ‘I feel a little uncomfortable. Can someone else be in the room?’ or ‘No, I don’t want to come with you to get a book you’re going to give me as a wrap present in your hotel room.’ Or, you know, that ultimate grooming line for young girls . . .”

“What’s that?”

“‘I see you, and I understand you like nobody else does.’”

When she picks me up the next morning, I find it difficult to hide my disappointment. I am set to tag along with her for a tour of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, opening later this year, the fund-raising for which Dern is helping to spearhead. The museum, which shares a campus with LACMA, will house decades’ worth of screenplays, photographs, and film paraphernalia, from Dorothy’s ruby slippers to one of the iPhones Sean Baker used to make Tangerine. But right now it’s still under construction. The site’s dress code advises full-length pants (“Jeans are best”) and a sleeved shirt (“A T-shirt is fine”)—”Hard hats and vests will be provided.” I follow these instructions to the letter, but when I open Dern’s car door, I see an alabaster hand, resting on the steering wheel, and, attached to it, the sleeve of an artfully frayed black blazer with silver chains.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “What is that?”

“It’s long-sleeved.”

“No, really, what is it?”

“It’s McQueen,” she gives in, laughing.

She looks down at the blazer and silk blouse beneath it.

“It’s more what Renata would wear to a construction site,” she allows. In her defense, our goals for this tour are different. Mine is to learn more about Dern’s passion for Hollywood’s history and future; and hers is to help entice high-level investors to support a 300,000-square-foot industry tribute. Still, one gets the sense this is a typical Dern outfit. She is a natural power dresser with an actor’s love for costume and an artist’s love for the sartorial. The night before, she wore custom Rodarte to the Governors Ball. Dern’s son, Ellery, modeled for Raf Simons. Her white Calvin Klein column gown at last year’s Oscars was so classy you could scream. All this has bred an allergy to “relegating fashion to ‘What are you wearing?’”

“I don’t love bougie things, you know? I have pieces that are so Renata, but the difference between us is I dress for how I want to feel as opposed to how I want people to feel about me.”

Then her phone rings—her daughter, Jaya, who is “desperate to see the museum,” will be joining us on the tour. I ask if her kids have seen her more sexually frank work, particularly Wild at Heart. They have not. David Lynch was at the house recently, and he advised her son not to see Wild at Heart until age 30.

“And Ellery goes, ‘Is it because my mom’s kind of sassy in the movie?,’ and David goes, ‘No, it’s not you seeing your mother I’m worried about, it’s seeing your grandmother!’ And suddenly I’m seeing this image of my mom painting her face red and going up to my boyfriend and saying, ‘How’d you like to fuck Lula’s momma?!,’ and oh my God, that’s my children’s grandmother! Fuck!”

Jaya skips toward us beneath the LACMA lampposts. She is a 14-year-old incarnation of Dern: funny, sophisticated, and gaining on her mom in height. Throughout the tour, mother and daughter rib and hug each other. Jaya hangs on her neck for dramatic effect when she’s bored. Right now, she wants to be either a journalist or an actress when she grows up.

We ride up a freight elevator with the rest of the tour group and are released into the sound of drilling and hammering. Dern speaks to the group as the wind whips at our eye gear and I hang back with Jaya, who’s no fan of heights. I hear bits and pieces. Her audience is rapt. (“She has the most gorgeous voice,” Kidman told me. “No one really talks about her voice, but I find her voice very soothing. It’s like balm.”)

“We want to continue . . . essential . . . women and diversity in film. When I was a kid . . .”

Jaya nods respectfully. She has heard her mom give this speech before. This really is Dern’s self-described “passion plea.” She’s even done some of the oral archiving herself; next on her docket are interviews with her father and Jack Nicholson. According to her father, this reverance for the past has always been there.

“We had a daughter who died,” he tells me over the phone one night. “She drowned at 18 months and Laura was born five years later. When Laura was seven years old, we were driving and she turned to me and she said, ‘I miss my sister.’ And I looked at her and I thought, What a thing to hear from a seven-year-old. And that made me know she is just on a different plane. Laura feels. Her sense of history is so strong.”

Indeed, the fear of losing one’s story, of being silenced, comes up repeatedly with Dern in various guises, whether it’s the theme of her work, her political views, or her personal history. It’s a fear that drives her, that comes out in the wash as contagious fervor. As we walk out, she asks me if I can believe that this place has never existed. I shake my head no. By this point, I too am flabbergasted, as if a crime has been committed.

“When my father wanted me to learn about film, he used to take me to a wax museum on Hollywood Boulevard.”

“You should have your own wax figurine!” Jaya interjects.

“I have my own Jurassic Park action figure,” says Dern.

For a late lunch, she suggests we hit up another Hollywood landmark: that storied site of fried chicken and attempted molestation, the Chateau Marmont. As we walk through the boudoir-like lobby (one always feels as if one were stepping into or out of a 50s matinee), I tell her I recently shared the elevator here with her Wild at Heart co-star Willem Dafoe. “Oh,” she gasps, “he’s so lovely, and yet every time I see him, I feel terrified.” Perhaps none of us should see Wild at Heart until we’re 30.

We sit on a banquette and she surveys the restaurant, bemused, commenting on how funny it is to see “all these people, starting their lives, starting their careers,” being at the Chateau in a way she has not been for some time. In addition to Little Women, she has her own production company, Jaywalker Pictures, is developing a limited series with Issa Rae at HBO, is playing Laura in Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy (the J. T. LeRoy story), and will star in the next Noah Baumbach movie. Meanwhile, she and Emma Stone have “come up with a story together and we’ll be producing it.” She’s forever on the lookout.

“As an actor, I’m waiting to be challenged to the depths again, to throw myself into the deep end. It’s been a while since I’ve thought: What am I doing? How am I doing this?”

And as a person? What is she waiting for?

She stares slightly into the middle distance before speaking. “I want to share something, but I want to share it in the most respectful way possible because I worship this person. As a child, my biggest influence on a daily basis was Lucille Ball. I had Barbara Stanwyck and Katharine Hepburn on my wall, but Lucy was my everything. She was my daily ritual. And my grandmother didn’t understand why I’d get so emotional when I Love Lucy reruns weren’t on and they’d play The Lucy Show instead. So finally she asked me why, because she knew I loved her so much. And I was like, ‘She seems sad now.’” Dern’s voice cracks when she says “sad,” which she mouths more than speaks. That second engine idles as the first one revs into gear. Her eyes water just a bit, but she blinks herself back to steady.

“She was such a dreamer and had all these cockeyed ideas about how to get her dreams fulfilled. Talk about breaking glass ceilings. But life had been hard for her and something had switched by the time The Lucy Show aired. And I know it’s a show and it’s a character. I never knew Lucille Ball. I wish I had—my mom did. Watching The Lucy Show, I thought: I never want to be bitter. That stuck with me. I just think . . .”

She trails off, smiling the wistful smile she seems to reserve for real dames. All of a sudden, I feel as if I am seeing all these classic Laura Dern characters at once, a row of wild faces opening their mouths to speak in unison: “I think that if someone brings you so much joy, they deserve joy.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the size of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. It is 300,000 square feet.