Kyle MacLachlan, born February 22, 1959, in WA, got his real breakthrough in acting thanks to director David Lynch. Lynch cast MacLachlan in the male lead in the movie Dune, in 1984, and then in Blue Velvet, two years later. When Lynch created the off-beat TV series, Twin Peaks, he gave MacLachlan the part of FBI agent Dale Cooper — a part that won MacLachlan a Golden Globe Award. Among other movies that he made are, The Doors, The Flintstones, and the remake of Kafka'sThe Trial. MacLachlan returned to TV as Trey MacDougal, in HBO's Sex and the City, and, later, as Orson Hodge in Desperate Housewives.
McLachlan is married to Desiree Gruber and they have one son.
Best Known As: FBI Agent Dale Cooper on TV's Twin Peaks
Kyle MacLachlan is an American leading man of stage and screen, known mostly for his offbeat, stylized performances in the TV series Twin Peaks (1989-90) and the film Blue Velvet (1986), both by filmmaker David Lynch. Kyle MacLachlan first got into acting in his Yakima, Washington high school in the late 1970s. He was doing theater work in 1983 when he was discovered in a nationwide search and cast as the hero in Lynch's film version of the Frank Herbert science fiction classic Dune (1984). MacLachlan is darkly handsome and yet somehow a little unsettling onscreen. His performances in Twin Peaks (as the eccentric and coffee-loving FBI agent Dale Cooper) and Blue Velvet (as a student who finds a human ear in a field and is plunged into a seedy local underworld) gave him a cult following, and he has since carved out an unusual career in TV and movies and then on the live stage. MacLachlan played keyboardist Robby Krieger in Oliver Stone's movie The Doors (1991), was in the Hollywood bomb Showgirls (1995) and spent two seasons on TV's Sex and the City (2002-04). His other films include the under-appreciated thriller The Hidden (1987), the overly silly The Flintstones (1994) and the art house biopic Mao's Last Dancer (2009). Kyle MacLachlan's television work includes In Justice (2006), Desperate Housewives (2010) and How I Met Your Mother (2010-11).
Kyle MacLachlan is a partner in a Washington winery, Pursued by Bear, located in Walla Walla. The name is taken from a stage direction in William Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale: "Exit, pursued by a bear."
Born in 1959, Washington native Kyle MacLachlan, among other things, claims to be a descendent of the legendary composer Johann Sebastian Bach. However, unlike his very distant relative, MacLachlan made his mark not in music, but in television and film. After performing in a variety of local theater productions throughout his youth -- and acting out scenes from the popular Hardy Boys fiction series in his even younger years -- MacLachlan made his feature-film debut in director David Lynch's adaptation Dune in 1984. This would mark the first of many collaborations with Lynch; in 1986, Lynch cast MacLachlan as a young man shocked at what lies under a small town's picture-perfect facade in Blue Velvet. A year later, MacLachlan starred as an alien FBI agent in The Hidden, Jack Sholder's 1987 cult hit.
MacLachlan, however, wouldn't gain true mainstream notoriety until 1989, when David Lynch called upon the young actor to play another FBI agent; this time, he was Special Agent Dale Cooper, who was sent to a small Washington town to investigate the murder of a young girl in ABC's popular but ultimately short-lived prime-time drama, Twin Peaks. The role would earn him two Emmy nominations for Lead Actor in a Drama Series and pave the way for more silver-screen roles, some of which include Ray Manzarek in Oliver Stone's The Doors (1991), villain Cliff Vandercave in The Flintstones (1994), and a falsely accused bank clerk in The Trial (1993). MacLachlan offered several relatively well-received starring and supporting performances throughout the mid- to late '90s, and did what he could for his role in Paul Verhoeven's famous 1995 flop, Showgirls.
Luckily, the late '90s to early 2000s were much kinder to MacLachlan. In addition to playing another smooth agent in David Koepp's The Trigger Effect (1996), which some critics claimed was his best performance since Blue Velvet, the actor also was cast as King Claudius in Michael Almereyda's adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. However, it was television that once again made MacLachlan a household name, albeit temporarily. In 2000, he joined the cast of HBO's multiple-award-winning series Sex and the City as Charlotte's (Kristin Davis) mama's boy husband, Trey. In 2003, MacLachlan starred in the Bravo network's popular documentary series, The Reality of Reality. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
MacLachlan has worked extensively with David Lynch. He first appeared as Paul Atreides in the film Dune (1984), Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert'snovel, and as Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986). Later he played Special Agent Dale Cooper in Lynch's ABC television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991), reprising that role for Lynch's 1992 prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Lynch commented on those roles in a GQ story about MacLachlan: "Kyle plays innocents who are interested in the mysteries of life. He's the person you trust enough to go into a strange world with."[2]
In 1995, MacLachlan starred in Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls. The movie was heavily panned by critics[4] and it collected seven Golden Raspberry Awards (from a record 13 nominations). MacLachlan himself was deeply embarrassed with his involvement; although some entertainment writers alleged that he walked out of the film's premiere, he personally contradicted these claims with the comment that he "suffered through the whole two hours" of the premiere.[5]
In recent years, MacLachlan continues to play dark or morally ambiguous characters. This included a guest role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in which he played a father who shot and killed a sociopathic child who had murdered his son. In the 1990s, MacLachlan was offered by NBC to be one of the lead actors on the new soap opera, Passions as a powerful, wealthy, villain and head of a multi-million dollar company but MacLachlan turned it down.[citation needed] MacLachlan also lent his voice to the nefarious media mogul Donald Love in the video game Grand Theft Auto III.[6] After starring in the short-lived In Justice, MacLachlan has become a regular on Desperate Housewives. His character, the mysterious dentist Orson Hodge, first appeared during the show's second season, and MacLachlan became a full-time cast member at the start of season three.
After four years of playing Orson Hodge, MacLachlan decided to quit Desperate Housewives. He decided to leave the show because after having children, he found the commute from his home in New York City to the Desperate Housewives set in Los Angeles very difficult.[8][9] However, MacLachlan is returning to Desperate Housewives in season eight, the final season, to make one last appearance as a guest star.
In 1993, Kyle met model Linda Evangelista on a fashion shoot for Barney's and the two began dating. Evangelista separated from her husband, Gerard Marie. The two appeared in further fashion spreads in Vogue magazine. Around 1998 or 1999, the two were supposedly engaged. The couple split up however, when Evangelista met French soccer star Fabien Barthez and she became pregnant by him. She later miscarried when she was 6 months along.
MacLachlan later married in 2002. MacLachlan lives in Manhattan with his wife, Desiree Gruber, an executive producer of Project Runway, and their son, Callum Lyon MacLachlan, born July 26, 2008, in Los Angeles.
The couple has two small dogs (a Jack Russell terrier and a Yorkie/Chihuahua mix) and out of "probably too much affection" have created a website about their dogs[11] as well as a TV series popular on YouTube.[12][13]
A dedicated oenophile, Kyle is partners with vintner Eric Dunham in Pursued By Bear, a winery in Washington's Columbia Valley. The name, suggested over dinner by Fred Savage, comes from a stage direction ("Exit, pursued by a bear") in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.[14]
Wikipedia on Answers.com. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Kyle MacLachlan. Read more
