Kyle MacLachlan is paying tribute to David Lynch after his death at age 78.
“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,” MacLachlan, 65, wrote via Instagram on Thursday, January 16. “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.”
MacLachlan wrote that his friendship with Lynch “blossomed” on Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, gushing that he “always found him to be the most authentically alive person I’d ever met.” (Lynch directed both the film and TV show, while MacLachlan starred in them.)
“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,” MacLachlan wrote. “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.”
Alongside the message, MacLachlan shared a series of photos of him and Lynch through the years.
“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,” he wrote. “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 continued, “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.”
News broke on Thursday that Lynch died following a battle with emphysema, which he was diagnosed with in 2020 after decades of smoking.
“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” Lynch’s family wrote in a Facebook post. “We would appreciate some privacy at this time. 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.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”
