Source: CNN
With the passing of beloved director David Lynch, many of the actors he worked with – along with countless admirers – have shared tributes to his legacy.
Lynch’s family announced that the filmmaker died earlier this week at the age of 78.
Kyle MacLachlan, one of Lynch’s most perennial stars, shared one of the first tributes after the news broke on Thursday, writing on Instagram, “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.”
He was referring to Lynch’s lofty 1984 sci-fi opus “Dune,” the pair’s first collaboration, in which MacLachlan portrayed Paul Atreides (a role that has been reprised by Timothée Chalamet in the more recent Denis Villeneuve movies). Lynch and Maclachlan went on to work together on two of the filmmaker’s most iconic projects, 1986’s “Blue Velvet” and the series “Twin Peaks,” which comprises three seasons and a feature-length prequel film.
MacLachlan wrote of Lynch, “I always found him to be the most authentically alive person I’d ever met. David was in tune with the universe and his own imagination on a level that seemed to be the best version of human.”
In a nod to Lynch’s famously enigmatic approach to storytelling, MacLachlan added, “He was not interested in answers because he understood that questions are the drive that make us who we are.”
“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,” he also wrote.
Naomi Watts, who famously starred in Lynch’s twisty 2001 tale “Mulholland Drive,” wrote on her Instagram, “He put me on the map.”
Sharing a little about her attempts to find her big break as an actress in Hollywood at that time, Watts continued, “The world I’d been trying to break into for ten plus years, flunking auditions left and right. Finally, I sat in front of a curious man, beaming with light, speaking words from another era, making me laugh and feel at ease. How did he even ‘see me’ when I was so well hidden, and I’d even lost sight of myself?!”
Watts went on to write that it wasn’t just Lynch’s art that “impacted” her.
“His wisdom, humor, and love gave me a special sense of belief in myself I’d never accessed before. Every moment together felt charged with a presence I’ve rarely seen or known. Probably because, yes, he seemed to live in an altered world, one that I feel beyond lucky to have been a small part of. And David invited all to glimpse into that world through his exquisite storytelling, which elevated cinema and inspired generations of filmmakers across the globe.”
Both Watts and MacLachlan shared galleries of photos that spanned the decades and showed their evolving friendships with Lynch.
MacLachlan’s “Blue Velvet” costar Isabella Rossellini shared a more recent photo of herself with the filmmaker to her Instagram, writing simply, “I loved him so much. Thanks for all your kind messages.”
Mädchen Amick, one of the most recognizable faces from the world of “Twin Peaks,” shared in a statement to CNN, “It’s hard for me to find the words to express the loss of, yes, a masterful genius but more importantly, a simply wonderful guy. David Lynch was my mentor.”
Calling him her “north star,” Amick wrote that Lynch “watched me grow up. He watched me become a mother. He cheered me on when I stepped into the director’s chair. I will hold those long conversations we had in his home on the hill very close to my heart. We laughed. We cried. We stayed inspired.”
But tributes to Lynch also came from his fellow filmmakers. In a statement, Martin Scorsese wrote that Lynch “really was a visionary—in fact, the word could have been invented to describe the man and the films, the series, the images and the sounds he left behind.”
“He created forms that seemed like they were right on the edge of falling apart but somehow never did. He put images on the screen unlike anything that I or anybody else had ever seen—he made everything strange, uncanny, revelatory and new.”
Steven Spielberg said in a statement to Variety that he “loved David’s films. ‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Elephant Man’ defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade.”
And Ron Howard wrote on X that Lynch was a “fearless artist who followed his heart & soul and proved that radical experimentation could yield unforgettable cinema.”