Laura Dern gave up her college education for David Lynch‘s Blue Velvet. The actress recalled this week that the University of California, Los Angeles, refused to grant her a leave of absence to film the movie, meaning she left for the project and never returned.
“I was 17, so excited to get into UCLA,” Dern said on Wednesday’s installment of Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s podcast, Where Everybody Knows Your Name. “I was there for two days, and I had auditioned and got offered the role in Blue Velvet.”
Dern said she was “ecstatic” at the opportunity, especially given her affinity for writer-director Lynch, but the school refused to grant her a leave of absence “for any reason.”
The Big Little Lies star said she tried will all her might to change the school’s mind. “I will write papers. I’ll come back and, double up classes,” she said of her attempted negotiations. “I’ll hire a tutor. I’ll do classes. I can mail back — we didn’t have the internet the way we do now, so it was hard to do stuff online or anything.”
At the time, Dern was set to study psychology and journalism, but she tried seeking support from the school’s film department.
“I said, ‘I have this opportunity,’ And [the head of the film department] 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.’”
When the professor returned with this feedback, he told her, “First of all, if you make this choice, you are no longer welcome at UCLA, you’ll be out. But secondly, having read this script, that you would give up your college education for this is insane.”
The Marriage Story actress acknowledged that Lynch’s Blue Velvet script was “incredibly shocking,” but the joke now appears to be on them.
“I will end by saying, after my two days, today if you want to get a master’s 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? Pisses me off.”
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to UCLA for confirmation that Blue Velvet is part of their curriculum.
Lynch’s Blue Velvet, which also stars Kyle MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini, is a murder mystery thriller that is often considered one of the best of its decade.