Diane often had the opportunity to share the screen with Laura, as she began appearing in several of her mother’s films as a child. Most recently, the mother-daughter duo got the chance to share the limelight once again in Mike White-produced TV program Illuminated from 2011 to 2013, where Diane played Laura’s character’s on-screen mother.
But in recent years, Diane’s health had taken a turn for the worse. In 2018, she shared that she had been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease she developed after being unknowingly exposed to pesticides sprayed in her neighborhood. With only three to six months left to live, she and her daughter were inspired to work together again to preserve their memories and together wrote their book titled Baby, baby, mine.
“We told each other everything,” Laura continued Today in 2023. “She said that she really felt like finally letting go of some of the sadness and challenges and heartbreak in her life, as well as us laughing over absurd fights and silly things we’ve been through, was actually so healing physically and emotionally.”
And for Laura, 58, it was an opportunity to see her mother in a different light.
“I was shocked at how little I had asked her,” Laura noted. “Even the simple things. I was raised by an actor, I worked with my mom, but I never asked, ‘Why did you want to be an actress from this small town in Mississippi?'”
