Following the death of David Lynch, longtime collaborator and friend Kyle MacLachlan has paid tribute to the late filmmaker and artist. In an Instagram post, the actor credited Lynch for jumpstarting his career and praised the director’s singular talent.
“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 [Dune],” MacLachlan began. “He clearly saw something in me that even I didn’t recognize. I owe my entire career, and life really, to his vision.”
He continued by describing Lynch as an “enigmatic and intuitive man” who had “a creative ocean bursting forth inside of him” and 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,” MacLachlan added. “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.”
Remembering his “dear friend who imagined a future for me and allowed me to travel in worlds I could never have conceived on my own,” MacLachlan pictured Lynch “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,” MacLachlan wrote. “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.”
He concluded, “David, I remain forever changed, and forever your Kale. Thank you for everything.”
Read our definitive ranking of Lynch’s movies and see more tributes here.