Laura Dern: "I'm At An Age Where I Say 'This Is Me' "

Laura Dern was just plain sick of it. She would drive around Los Angeles where each billboard would be a dose of perfection.

A few weeks ago, she did something amazing. She saw her own Billboard up there for her stunning HBO series "Enlightened."

Dern plays a Midlifer at a crossroads. Her ad is a giant photo of her crying with black streaks of mascara racing down her cheeks.

Wait, this isn't the glam shot that many A-lists actresses would approve.

 "There I was up there on this huge billboard with my mascara running down my face and I loved it," says Dern. "Honestly, it was my personal longing to drive down Sunset Boulevard and see something different than poster after poster of airbrushed, fake body parts or Botoxed this and Botoxed that."

"I was like, 'Someone has got to shake this up,'" she says. "You get to an age where you proudly say, 'This is me!'"

She also notes the irony.

"That image of my face is between a very gorgeous high fashion ad and an equally beautiful makeup ad. Sadly, the women aren't real in those images.

"I'm beyond real," she says. "I'm much too in your face. I'm thrilled to be the one saying, 'This is what it is to be human.' We're angry, complicated, sexy, ugly, pretty, unattractive – and those are all the things I'm playing in my new series because most of us are all of those things."

A SHOW YOU MUST CHECK OUT

Dern plays a woman you might know on "Englightened."

She's Amy, a midlifer who has found that life is not that fulfilling, so it's time to make some major changes.

She's so stressed out by corporate life that she decides to examine the meaning of real life and what it really means to change the world.

That means dealing with her mother (played by Darn's own mom, Diane Ladd) and her drug addict ex husband (Luke Wilson).

 "I loved the fact that this woman really loses it in the best way. She comes back to her job and life after taking some time out to ask a lot of important life questions. She pushes the audience to ask questions about what it means to be honest, female and angry.

"I also loved that this character is willing to risk everything to speak her mind. The show also will explore incremental victories and minor shifts, which is very poignant to me because life isn't usually the big shifts, but the little movements.

"The show also appealed to me because it speaks to my generation. We're furious and we want to make it better, but we don't really know what to do," she says.  

She says the show reflects how women and men struggle.

"This show is about human issues, American issues and being alive issues. I've had male journalists say to me, 'I'm Amy.'

"Basically, I wanted to just tell the truth and show how some of life's saddest moments make us laugh so hard."

LAURA ON BEAUTY

"Unfortunately, I do care about aging and I'm furious with myself that I care," she says with a laugh.

"I do everything that most people are out there doing, but I like what I see in the mirror.

"I am what I am," she says.

"I don't have any other options except moving to France where 30 year old guys still want to go to movies about 50 year old women. I find that very refreshing!"

"Someday, Cindy, we can have a meal in Paris and talk about that!" she says.

Dern laughs and says her kids are even into the whole aging issue.

"My son will pinch my elbow skin and say, 'Use moisturizer!' My nine-year-old is calling me out!'"

HER VIEWS ON MIDLIFE

Her new show talks about the stresses of midlife.

 "We're at an age where there is so much stress. But I think most of all, we're a generation trying to redefine what it all means to us.

"We don't have that 50s mentality of our parents. But we're not going to sit there and read self-help books hoping it will make it different for us.

"I think the big stress on my generation is asking ourselves: How do we use compassion to change the world? How do we use our voices and not have people deem us as crazy?"

 "I know in the last 15 years, I've been angry at where we are and where our country is now. It has been proven on Wall Street and Egypt that your voice makes an enormous difference.

"I'm encouraged that incredible things have happened in the last year. I think everyone has to figure out how to matter during this time of healing."

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