Laura Dern has reacted to the death of David Lynch in an emotional post celebrating what would have been the director’s 79th birthday.
Lynch, the much celebrated director of Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks and The Elephant Man died on 15 January, aged 78.
His family announced his passing in a Facebook post, writing: “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’”
Dern was one of Lynch’s most frequent collaborators with the director first casting Dern in his 1986 noir-horror Blue Velvet when she was just 17 years old.
Lynch and Dern then reunited in 1990 for Wild Heart, which starred the Marriage Story actor and Nicolas Cage as a young couple on the run from their controlling families and a group of hit men.
The star also appeared in Lynch’s 2006 feature Inland Empire, for which he famously campaigned for Dern to be nominated for an Oscar by sitting on a street corner with a live cow in Los Angeles.
Dern also featured in Lynch’s 2017 revival of Twin Peaks, which The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey called a “fitting end to TV’s greatest treasure”.
Sharing a photo of herself and Lynch engaged in conversation to Instagram, Dern wrote: “Happy birthday, tidbit. I will love and miss you every day for the rest of my life.”
In the wake of his death, numerous tributes have been paid to Lynch by those who worked with him closely, including Naomi Watts, Kyle MacLachlan, Nicolas Cage, Madchen Amick and Lara Flynn Boyle.
Back in 2019, Dern told Greta Gerwing during an interview on Inside the Actors Studio that it was Lynch who prevented her from being typecast in films.
“It was an amazing gift that a filmmaker who knows you would say ‘‘Now I want you to play the complete opposite of what you did last time,’” she said.
Dern has also revealed that she’s still angry that she was kicked out of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for taking the role in Blue Velvet – yet the film is now part of the school’s curriculum.
After Dern’s department head had read the Blue Velvet script he told her: “‘First of all, if you make this choice, you are no longer welcome at UCLA. You’ll be out. But secondly, having read this script, that you would give up your college education for this is insane.’”
The Academy Award-winning actor reflected: “Obviously, it was an incredibly shocking script.”
She added: “I will just end by saying after my two days, today, if you want to get a masters in film at that school, when you write a thesis there are three movies you are required to study. And you know what one of them is? [Blue Velvet].”
“P***es me off,” she admitted.
