I know you guys are already tired of Reese Witherspoon’s Oscar campaign, for good reason. Reese is exhausting! And Reese really, really wants a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Wild. But Reese isn’t the only person in the film campaigning for a nomination! Laura Dern plays Cheryl Strayed’s mother in flashback scenes, and Dern’s camp has been trying to turn up the buzz for a Supporting Actress nomination. Dern is 47 years old in real life, and Reese is 38. I guess they get away with that because in the flashback scenes, the young Cheryl is played by the actual Cheryl Strayed’s daughter Bobbi. Anyway, Dern has a new interview with The Daily Beast, and I can feel the hustle from here! There’s a lot of Oprah-speak about grief and love and motherhood. Some highlights:

A mother-daughter love story: “I think we’re robbed of all love stories other than some fairy tale idea of how men and women are supposed to relate. Same-sex love stories. Parent-child love stories. I think there’s a world to explore in what love looks like that is going to be very exciting in the future of film. So I’m really excited to be part of that, because our first true love and often the great love of our life is often a parent or grandparent.”

Playing characters dealing with cancer: “It’s not morbid, because it’s the thing we don’t talk about and it’s all around us. We all have a friend or loved one who we lost to cancer or is going through cancer treatment right now. It’s everywhere. My kids have fellow classmates who have cancer, and they’re children. It’s become such an epidemic.”

Dealing with grief: “If you go to a therapist in America or a doctor, most often if you say I’m really struggling, I can’t get over my loss, they will give you a prescription… So to be part of the dialogue of grief as part of each of our stories, and have conversations like the one I’m having with you now about loss and love and first love and the fear of grief and cancer and how we navigate and find joy despite all these things we’re all walking through—aren’t we lucky to be having this conversation and not some typical Hollywood movie conversation?”

Aging in Hollywood: “You know, it’s a complicated question, because I do empathize with the worry. I understand why actors fear age limiting them.” But at the same time, both of those roles offered the opportunity of a change in pace. I’ve spent the last decade of my adult life still playing girls. Several girls, meaning women who haven’t caught up with the fact that they’re grown-ups yet. A lot of arrested development, especially in this show I did for HBO, Enlightened. I never really played a mother. The last mother I played I was huffing paint and pregnant with my fifth kid, and didn’t know where the other four were. I’m not the archetype of maternal. So to have the privilege to express in two very different ways what it is to mother has been beautiful for me—and a really cool opportunity for me as an actual mother. But I see it as another role, not something that I now have to do. Not like, ‘Oh now I’m playing moms. Next is grandmas.’”

[From The Daily Beast]

I think she’s right about her place as a 40-something actress in Hollywood. Dern was never, like, a Julia Roberts-type of movie star. Dern was always experimenting with TV shows, miniseries and films, going from lead actress to character actress from project to project. That insulated her from a lot of crap traditional leading ladies face as they age.

Anyway, it’s becoming pretty clear that Dern wants a nomination, if not the actual award. The Best Supporting Actress race is pretty interesting this year – we might have Keira Knightley (who is also coming to play), Emma Stone, Patricia Arquette, Jessica Chastain, Meryl Streep and… Kristen Stewart, maybe? I could see Dern making the shortlist. I could also see Keira making a late surge… especially if Keira debuts her baby bump, you know? Also: I always enjoy the old-school dramz when Laura Dern and Angelina Jolie are at the same event. They seem to go out of their way to avoid each other!

Photos courtesy of WENN.