He's worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood in a career that has stretched more than 50 years. And he's part of the only Oscar-nominated father-mother-daughter combination with his daughter Laura Dern and his ex-wife Diane Ladd.
But only now, at age 75, has Bruce Dern received his first Emmy nomination.
"I'm flabbergasted," Dern told TheWrap on the occasion of his Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series nod for the final season of "Big Love."
In that season, his monstrous patriarch Frank Harlow shows a soft side as he finds his wife Lois (Grace Zabriskie) succumbing to dementia – never mind that they'd tried to kill each other in earlier seasons, or that he gave her the STD that caused her condition.
For four seasons, Dern's role as Bill Paxton's dad, the domineering overseer in a polygamous religious community, had seemed to be one more addition to his lengthy resume of psychos, weirdos and villains – but in the end, the guy showed a heart that made him unexpectedly touching.
Dern's career encompasses close to 80 films and 60 television appearances, and shows few signs of stopping: he's in Francis Coppola's upcoming thriller "Twixt," and in the fall he hopes to start shooting "Hart's Location," in which he'll appear for the first time with his daughter and his ex-wife.
In the past, Dern has worked with everyone from Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne and Elia Kazan to B-movie mavens Roger Corman and Sam Arkoff. In conversation, one topic flows into another: an anecdote about "Big Love" will spur memories of Corman, while a question about Coppola will prompt stories about Kazan.
A sampling of the Dern experience:
"Big Love," Little Role
I was surprised by the nomination, simply because in the five years [the show was on the air] I never really had that much to do. But this was a satisfying season, because there was, if you will, a directional change in the character. For four years, I was the asshole on the show. I was supposed to be the bad guy. Well, in the last year, when Lois got sick, I don’t think anybody expected Frank to love her and care for her and try to make her have the best life she could have. So that was nice. That made the last season worthwhile.
Those Darn Mormons
I don't think they knew it when they hired me, but my grandfather Dern was the first non-Mormon governor of Utah, from 1925 to 1933. And then FDR took him to Washington and he went on to become Secretary of War and died in office.
I didn't grow up in Salt Lake, I grew up outside of Chicago, but I was always interested in the Mormons that I knew.
