Kyle MacLachlan

Overview

Born
February 22, 1959 · Yakima, Washington, USA
Birth name
Kyle Merritt McLachlan
Nickname
- Kale
Height
6′ (1.83 m)

Biography

Family

Spouse
Children
Parents

Trademarks

Frequently plays smarmy, wealthy characters
Often plays sneaky and sleazy villains
Deep smooth voice
Often cast by David Lynch (Dune (1984), Blue Velvet (1986), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), and the television series Twin Peaks (1990))

Trivia

Director Bruce Beresford said about him: "Kyle wears his handsomeness easily; he doesn't carry on. And he's not a boring man. He's ordinary but interesting, which is difficult to find."
The name of his winery, "Pursued by Bear," was suggested one evening over dinner by Steve Martin, and refers to a stage direction in Shakespeare's play, The Winters Tale. As the story goes, Shakespeare only ever wrote one stage direction in any of his plays (that job was generally left for stage managers), as included in "The Winter's Tale": "Exit, pursued by a bear".
When his son, Callum, was born in 2008, he created a new wine vintage at his winery called "Baby Bear".
Often stars in David Lynch films such as Dune (1984), Blue Velvet (1986), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), and the television series Twin Peaks (1990), originated by Lynch and Mark Frost.
Was nominated for a 1990 Grammy Award in the category of Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Recording for the album "Diane...'The Twin Peaks Tapes Of Agent Cooper'".

Quotes

After the series finished, I was reluctant to return for the film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). I was pretty naive about it. At the time, I felt like I was trapped in this stale role, but looking back, Dale Cooper was one of the best things that happened to me. I went on to make some film choices that were rather strange - made with the best intentions, but not necessarily coming out the way I wanted them to. I certainly can't pretend that I didn't do Showgirls (1995). But I've been around for a while now, I'm of a certain age and I'm still doing what I love to do. There's some good work in there and there's some work that's questionable.
There's not very many filmmakers like David [David Lynch], particularly in America. He's so brave and courageous. He creates from a place that is unknown. He's not following any blueprints. He's following an unconscious urge and that's hard to do nowadays when people want to know how much you're going to make on this film on the first day of filming. They want to know what they can recoup by day 90, or day 120, or day 180, or whatever. And David just doesn't work that way and that just doesn't exist anymore.
[on whether or not the failure of Dune (1984) was deserved]: I think yes and no. We made it in '83 and it came out in '84 [with] 'Dino De Laurentis', who had a habit of over-hyping all of his pictures and saying it was the biggest budget ever seen - an over-the-top kind of salesmanship. It was a book that was incredibly popular but was impossible to translate. David did an okay job. Now you'd do a "Lord of the Rings" thing - you'd break it into three and you'd hope that it would recoup. But that would be the book, would be three movies. I think it was ill-fated from the get-go. There was no way you were going to make sense of this. There were just too many things going on. Add to the fact that special effects were sort of in an infancy. I know we'd had Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), that was '77 and this was '83, [but] blue screen was still pretty rudimentary. You couldn't use the computer on any of this stuff and that would have been a tremendous help.
[Further speculating on why Dune (1984) failed]: It had kind of a throwback quality, at a time when we were just getting used to science fiction. We were just seeing shiny "Star Wars" stuff. I appreciated "Alien" because it felt like that ship had been in space God knows how long. It was kind of beaten up and dirty. This was something that was even different than that. This was like made from the '30s, kind of. It was just at the wrong time. Add to the fact that it was very difficult to follow, it was a bit stilted, it was just not what people wanted at that time. Now you go back and revisit it and you're sort of stunned at the beauty of some of the scenes. It doesn't pull together but, to me, it's like a Blade Runner (1982). I like to go and watch "Blade Runner", which made no sense but which I loved going into that world. I think people loved going into the world of "Dune" with all of its problems.
(On seeing Showgirls (1995) for the first time) It was about to première, I hadn't seen it yet, and I wanted to. So I went to see it and... I was absolutely gobsmacked. I said, "This is horrible. Horrible!" And it's a very slow, sinking feeling when you're watching the movie, and the first scene comes out, and you're like, "Oh, that's a really bad scene." But you say, "Well, that's okay, the next one'll be better." And you somehow try to convince yourself that it's going to get better... and it just gets worse. And I was like, "Wow. That was crazy." I mean, I really didn't see that coming. So at that point, I distanced myself from the movie. Now, of course, it has a whole other life as a sort of inadvertent... satire. No, "satire" isn't the right word. But it's inadvertently funny. So it's found its place. It provides entertainment, though not in the way I think it was originally intended. It was just... maybe the wrong material with the wrong director and the wrong cast. Apart from all that, it was great. [Laughs.] It has a couple of moments in it that are pretty wild. And I gotta say that, when I was watching the actual shows that they created, I was like, "Hey, this is a Vegas show!" I was watching it from the audience, and it was amazing, what they were able to create. But reduced down to its elements, it was, uh, not one of my finer attempts. But it was done initially for all the right reasons; it just didn't turn [out] to be what I anticipated. Everybody has one of those in their repertoire, I think. It's just that this one has stayed around. Even Ishtar (1987) eventually disappeared. But this one keeps coming back! [Laughs.]