Laura Dern has spoken about how her decision to star in Alexander Payne's 1996 debut film Citizen Ruth, rather than capitalise on the blockbuster success of Jurassic Park, proved to be a defining moment in her career. After Jurassic Park confirmed her as a major star, Dern turned down numerous lucrative offers to instead take on a small, risky independent project, a choice she credits with shaping the deliberate, varied path her career has followed ever since.

Dern, who began acting as a child thanks to her parents Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, had already built a body of striking work in the 1980s and early 1990s, including Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and the Oscar-nominated Rambling Rose, before Jurassic Park grossed over $1 billion and made her a household name. She has said a conversation with Martin Scorsese encouraged her to keep "building a body of work" rather than chasing commercial success, prompting her to choose Citizen Ruth, in which she played a pregnant, drug-addicted woman caught up in the US abortion debate, over more mainstream projects. Dern has called it a "life-changing role" that validated her instinct to follow unconventional choices, a path that later led to further acclaim in films such as Inland Empire and Marriage Story, for which she won an Oscar.