'I remember saying, this is going to be horrible...' Laura Dern reveals Jurassic Park cast feared film would be a flop

Laura Dern feared Jurassic Park would be "horrible" because no one knew what the CGI dinosaurs would look like on screen.

The 58-year-old actress played palaeobotanist Ellie Sattler alongside Sam Neill as palaeontologist Alan Grant, in Steven Spielberg's acclaimed blockbuster, which was based on Michael Crichton's 1990 novel of the same name.

Although Jurassic Park became a huge box office hit banking $914 million worldwide in its original theatrical run, Laura can recall the cast being very nervous that the special effects would not be realistic enough and that the final cut would be a disappointment.

Laura and her co-stars had to imagine what the dinosaurs looked like as Spielberg shouted "roar" through a megaphone.

She said: "None of us knew what it would look like. CGI was only just being formulated as we were filming. It was so radical in its invention. I remember Richard Attenborough saying to Steven Spielberg in rehearsal, ‘We need a cue, we need something that we can all react to,’ Steven agreed and as we waiting for something to happen Steven shouted through a megaphone behind us ‘ROAR! ROAR!’. It was at that moment I remember looking Richard in the eye and saying, ‘This is going to be horrible!’ But it turned out well.”

Laura reprised her role as Ellie in 2001's Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World Dominion, released in 2022.

The Is This Thing On? star seemed destined for a career in acting as the daughter of Oscar nominated actor Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, who starred in Martin Scorsese's 1974 romantic drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

But growing up, Laura claims she didn't know that her parents were famous actors until she saw her dad Bruce on screen for herself.

Appearing on The Graham Norton Show, she said: "I didn’t know much about what they did, but when I about six years old I saw a bit of an old movie in which Bette Davis had a hat box and out of the box rolled a head. In close-up it was my dad’s head. I started screaming and my grandma had to call my father to assure me his head was still on. It was somewhat traumatic and for some reason I still wanted to be an actor – I’m not sure why!”