HBO's Enlightened kicked off the Laura Dern renaissance nearly a decade ago

Vox

Since Dern starred in the two-season 2011-2013 HBO dramedy that she co-created with Mike White, she's been nominated for two Oscars, winning one for Marriage Story this past Sunday. She's nominated for two Emmys, winning one for Big Little Lies. (Dern also earned an Emmy nomination and won a Golden Globe for Enlightened.) As Emily Todd VanDerWerff points out, Enlightened "tapped into Dern’s talent for playing white women of a certain social class who are barely holding it together. She’s played variations on her Enlightened character, Amy Jellicoe, in many of her biggest film and TV roles since, but none of them quite match up to Amy in my mind. She was a true original. Enlightened was one of my favorite TV shows of the 2010s, and Dern gave perhaps the best TV performance of the decade."