He attended Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles and, following the death of his father in 1964, graduated from the University of Southern California where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree while also fulfilling his military obligations in the United States Air Force Reserve.
Ladd's professional career in Hollywood began in 1957 with a supporting role in a film starring his father titled The Big Land.
As a result of that film's success, Samuel Goldwyn Jr offered him a role as a mute in the 1958 movie The Proud Rebel, once again playing opposite his father and co-starring Olivia de Havilland.
Ladd followed this success with a series of films including The Sad Horse (1959), A Dog of Flanders (1960), Raymie (also 1960) and Misty (1961), as well as appearing in numerous television shows including Bonanza, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, Wagon Train, Family Affair and Shirley Temple's Storybook (as Tom Sawyer).
His first production was a re-imagining of the hit TV series The Mod Squad, in which he shared an Executive Producer credit with Aaron Spelling, with whom he had first collaborated on The Zane Grey Theatre in 1961.
He found a manuscript written by John Katzenbach and developed it as a screenplay for the 2002 film, Hart's War, directed by Gregory Hoblit and starring Bruce Willis, Colin Farrell and Terrence Howard.