Laura Dern shared a heartfelt birthday message on Instagram to her longtime collaborator David Lynch on Monday, four days after news of his death.
“Happy birthday, treat,” Dern wrote. “I will love and miss you every day for the rest of my life.”
Since casting Dern in “Blue Velvet” at age 17, Lynch has affectionately called her “Tidbit.” In 2019, she presented him with her honorary Oscar alongside Kyle MacLachlan – also known as “Kale”.
“His nicknames have stuck with us as we share the privilege of working with him our entire adult lives,” Dern said, later adding, “Everyone who works alongside David feels that electricity. It’s his enthusiasm and his passion that he brings to the set that makes you feel like you’re doing what you were always meant to do.
Dern was one of Lynch’s most prominent muses and collaborators. Her career gained momentum after she had a supporting role in her 1986 mystery thriller “Blue Velvet” as Sandy Williams, the daughter of a detective who becomes involved in an investigation around an ear cut off. The two then worked together again on “Wild at Heart” (1990), in which Dern starred opposite Nicolas Cage as Lula Pace Fortune, who flees her mother after hiring criminals to kill her boyfriend Sailor. She headlined Lynch’s last film, “Inland Empire” (2006), as an actress who begins to embody the character she plays in a film in her real life. Dern also appeared in 2017’s “Twin Peaks: The Return,” playing the previously unreleased character Diane Evans.
MacLachlan also paid tribute to Lynch following news of his death, writing on Instagram: “I owe my entire career, and truly my life, to his vision. What I saw in him was an enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative ocean welling up within him. He was in touch with something we wish we could achieve.
