Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Twin Peaks’ Star Kyle MacLachlan Remembers David Lynch: “He Understood That Questions Are The Drive That Make Us Who We Are”
Kyle MacLachlan, who was David Lynch’s FBI agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, Paul Atreides from Dune and Jeffrey Beaumont from Blue Velvet, took to social media Thursday to express his sorrow over the death of the filmmaker who made him a leading man across TV and film.
Wrote MacLachlan, “Forty-two years ago, for reasons beyond my comprehension, David Lynch plucked me out of obscurity to star in his first and last big budget movie. He clearly saw something in me that even I didn’t recognize. I owe my entire career, and life really, to his vision.
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“What I saw in him was an enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative ocean bursting forth inside of him. He was in touch with something the rest of us wish we could get to.
“Our friendship blossomed on Blue Velvet and then Twin Peaks and I always found him to be the most authentically alive person I’d ever met.
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“David was in tune with the universe and his own imagination on a level that seemed to be the best version of human. He was not interested in answers because he understood that questions are the drive that make us who we are. They are our breath.
“While the world has lost a remarkable artist, I’ve lost a dear friend who imagined a future for me and allowed me to travel in worlds I could never have conceived on my own.
“I can see him now, standing up to greet me in his backyard, with a warm smile and big hug and that Great Plains honk of a voice. We’d talk coffee, the joy of the unexpected, the beauty of the world, and laugh.
“His love for me and mine for him came out of the cosmic fate of two people who saw the best things about themselves in each other.
“I will miss him more than the limits of my language can tell and my heart can bear. My world is that much fuller because I knew him and that much emptier now that he’s gone.
“David, I remain forever changed, and forever your Kale. Thank you for everything.”
MacLachlan landed two Primetime Emmy Drama Actor noms in 1990 and 1991 for playing the fastidious and deadpan FBI agent Cooper on Twin Peaks. The actor had first broken out in Lynch’s ambitious 1984 sci-fi take of Frank Herbert’s Dune in the lead role of sandworm rider and galaxy hero Paul Atreides.
This was quickly followed by Lynch’s offbeat small-town noir Blue Velvet, in which MacLachlan played a young man who finds a severed ear in a field that leads him into the arms of a nightclub singer (Isabella Rossellini) and an underworld of criminals led by an amyl nitrite-inhaling boss played by Dennis Hopper. Blue Velvet landed Lynch a Best Director Oscar nom in 1987.
MacLachlan later reprised his Agent Cooper role in the prequel movie Fire Walk With Me and the 2017 Showtime sequel series, when Cooper goes off the deep end to put it mildly.
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