When she received a call from David Lynch's assistant assuring her that the acclaimed film director wanted to meet with her immediately, Laura Harring didn't even have a representative. After more than a decade of trying to carve out a place for himself in the mecca of the seventh art, with a few roles in television soap operas being the highest professional milestone, the Mexican's hopes of becoming a star had faded into the background . “I had already given up on Hollywood,” he admitted. “I did theater and something very experimental,” a euphemism to confirm that he didn’t charge a single dollar for his work. But Lynch had seen her face among hundreds of portraits of actresses and, not caring about the interpreter's weak resume, decided that she would be the protagonist of his next project. Harring was so excited about the opportunity presented to her that she rammed her car into another vehicle on the way to the principal's office. “When his assistant told me that the script started with my character driving a car and getting into a traffic accident, I got goosebumps.”
The actress with David Lynch in 2001.Pool BENAINOUS/DUCLOS (Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
A few years later, Harring not only already had a representative, but also walked the red carpet at the Cannes Festival like a diva. Mulholland Drive had only just seen the light of day and although it had not yet reached its current status as an absolute cult classic, it was named the best film of the century so far by media outlets such as the BBC, but its protagonist was compared to myths of golden Hollywood like Ava Gardner or Rita Hayworth, whose name her character also borrows in the film. The press devoted all sorts of covers and labels—“Latina bombshell,” “femme fatale,” “sex symbol”—to this explosive, amnesiac woman who is saved physically and emotionally by the aspiring actress played by Naomi Watts. Both proved wrong when ABC executives abandoned the Mulholland Drive pilot – yes, it was originally intended to be a series – because its protagonists, in their early thirties, were “too old to be TV stars.”
Harring took the opportunity to shine at the film festival and impressed the photographers with her miss tricks: she took off her jacket, showed off her curves in a suggestive denim top and left the imprint of her red lips on Lynch's face. “As we left, the journalists started applauding and chanting my name in unison: 'Laura, Laura, Laura!' So I came back, raised my arms and blew them a kiss. They roared excitedly. The president of the festival said to me, 'Where have you been all these years?'” the actress recalls. His charismatic presence had completely overshadowed that of his co-star, so during dinner he took Watts' hand and made a prediction. “I told her, 'Naomi, things are always changing and one day the sun will shine on your shoulders.' And he did it.”
More than twenty years later, Laura Elena Martínez Harring, now celebrating her 60th birthday, is aware that David Lynch's masterpiece has already secured her a privileged place in cinematic immortality. Although the Sinaloa artist has worked steadily over the last few decades, especially on the small screen and in films such as “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “John Q”, he never again achieved the impact that Lynch's film had. She'll probably never overcome the label of “the brunette from Mulholland Drive,” something Naomi Watts managed to do, but she seems happy with it. “I have already left my mark in Hollywood, I am part of a classic. “I wouldn’t even have to go back to work,” he said in The Independent in 2017. Harring, who has made just one film in the last five years, announced his retirement from acting just a month ago. “It was a wonderful life and a wonderful career. I appreciate every crew member, every actor, every director and every producer of my films and series. There will always be a place for you in my heart. “I'm retired but not dead, there's still a lot to live for,” she wrote on her Instagram account. On the same social network, she daily shares advice on personal and spiritual development and declares herself a follower of yoga, cosmic healing and other personal growth formulas such as manifestation.
Laura Harring at the premiere of “Blonde” in California last year.Jon Kopaloff (Getty Images)
Perhaps Harring can use this new time away from the sets to write the first pages of a biography that seems exciting. The daughter of a farmer and a psychotherapist, her family immigrated to Texas when she was a child. At the age of 12, he was the victim of a shooting in the parking lot of a movie theater and suffered a bullet in the head that missed his brain by just a few millimeters. Shortly thereafter, her parents sent her to an exclusive Swiss school and after graduating, she volunteered in India to help the underprivileged. After returning to the United States, she decided to enter a beauty pageant in her hometown of El Paso, motivated by the opportunity to travel across the country. He won this and several other competitions. She was Miss El Paso, Miss Texas and finally Miss USA in 1985, becoming the first Latina to receive the title. That was his catapult into the world of acting. At the same time, at the age of just 18, Harring married Count Carl von Bismarck, the great-great-grandson of the former Reich Chancellor and architect of German unity. Confronted with the young woman's professional future – he didn't want her to work – they divorced two years later. Since then, Laura Harring has retained the title of countess, but has never walked down the aisle again.