“If you make this choice, you are no longer welcome at UCLA,” Laura Dern was told when she requested time off to make Blue Velvet.

Then aged 17, Laura Dern was thrilled to land a major part in David Lynch’s 1986 thriller, Blue Velvet. Unfortunately, the powers that be at her university were less impressed.

Speaking to Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson on their podcast, Where Everybody Knows Your Name (via Variety), Dern recounted the moment where she had to choose between her education and working with one of America’s great maverick directors. She’d only been at UCLA for two days, she recalled, when she successfully auditioned for the part of Sandy Williams – one of the film’s central characters.

When Dern went to the head of UCLA’s film department to request time off to appear in the movie, however, the answer was a resounding ‘absolutely not’.

“Well,...