Laura Dern on Steven Spielberg's 'Jurassic Park' T-Rex Impression

Jenni Kasım 22, 2021

Actress Laura Dern is on the road promoting her new movie, Wild, but that doesn't mean that the discussion doesn't turn toward the work she's done in the past - for example, Jurassic Park.

Dern played Dr. Ellie Sattler in the groundbreaking 1993 film directed by Steven Spielberg, and she has wonderful things to say about the opportunity to work on what had the spirit of an independent film, but also happened to be the first major CGI film at that time.

She shared a particular memory that involved the actors having a difficult time with a scene, and the solution Spielberg implemented to assist them:

I remember we were all standing in a row, and this crane of, like, chewed up metal comes up, and we're supposed to realize what the T-rex can do and all have this look to the side when we hear a sound. And we did a take and then we cut and Steven's like, "You guys were all looking different directions." We said, "Steven, we're supposed to respond to the sound and there's nothing there. We don't know when we're supposed to respond, so we're responding at different times." He goes, "Oh, oh, okay, I got this." Rolling and action! And we're all there looking, and the camera pushes in, and then Steven, through a megaphone, goes, "RAWR! RAWR!" And all of us looked at each other, and I remember Richard Attenborough going, "Oh, Steven, um, this is troubling."