"Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good hot black coffee"
-Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), Twin Peaks (1990-1991; 2017).
Kyle MacLachlan, one of my very favorite actors in the world of cinema and television, turned 62 years old this week. MacLachlan is one of the most underrated actors in the business - I'm constantly amazed by the range that he has despite always bringing his trademark enthusiasm and energy into his roles. Within that energy, his acting abilities range from despicable villains to lovable heroes, from wildly comedic to dead-serious. Here are my favorite performances from Mr. MacLachlan!
10. Cliff Vandercave in The Flintstones (1994)
Brian Levant's live action Flintstones movie isn't exactly a cinematic masterpiece, but it is quite entertaining in its over-the-top antics. This is especially thanks to John Goodman living up to the iconic role of Fred Flintstone, as well as Kyle MacLachlan stealing the show as the deliciously over-the-top villain Cliff Vandercave.
MacLachlan truly turned his trademark charisma and gusto up to eleven with this hammy role that truly feels like a cartoon come to life - and I mean this in a good way. Not exactly an Oscar-worthy feat of acting, but a perfect bad-guy performance for this kind of film.
9. Dad in Inside Out (2015)
Kyle MacLachlan has done his share of voice acting in the field of animation, including the role of the main character's father in Pixar's masterful Inside Out. While being far from the film's best voice performance (those honors belong to the emotion-characters, especially Bill Hader as Fear), the role is done with an appropriate combination of distance and warmth. The father-character, just like the mother (Diane Lane), is just cold enough to make the main character's feeling of alienation feel believable - but ultimately warm enough to ensure that the parents do love their daughter and want the best for her.
8. David Seton in High Flying Bird (2019)
MacLachlan only has a few scenes in Steven Soderbergh's Netflix original basketball drama, but as the actor has a habit of doing, he steals every scene he's in. He plays David Seton, the CEO of the fictional sports agency that the film centers on. The character is an unlikable one, as he represents the sort of corruption and greed within the NBA that Soderbergh aimed to criticize with the film. The actor plays a remarkable antagonist for the main characters to go up against, being startlingly believable as such a 'hard-ass' boss character who is very far from the types of roles he usually plays.
7. Dougie Jones in Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
Kyle MacLachlan is so essential to my all-time favorite series that he plays more than one character in it - each one is so unique that I felt a need to include all of his different Twin Peaks role performances separately. The least impressive of his three roles in David Lynch's masterpiece is still a very impressive one; it is the role of Dougie Jones in 2017's revival season.
Now, we only see the "real" Dougie Jones (if there is such a thing; there are various interpretations on the character's origin but I don't want to make this post historically long by diving into the rabbit hole of interpreting Twin Peaks) very shortly in a few episodes, but we see a whole lot of Agent Cooper being stuck in Dougie Jones's body, with the person in question being some sort of mixture between the two people while not really being either. With this unique role, MacLachlan makes for a lot of slapstick comedy and many sympathetic moments. Dougie hearing the word "coffee", and subsequently repeating the word with a smile and walking towards the location of the coffee, is probably the most relatable TV scene I have ever seen.
6. The Captain in How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014)
This hysterical role was my first introduction to the actor who would go on to become an all-time favorite. As The Captain, MacLachlan reaches a maximum level of eccentricity, and the results are wonderful. He plays a hilariously out-of-touch guy whose personality can be boiled down to "really, really into boats". He has brilliant chemistry with the main characters (the subplot of him going sailing with Ted (Josh Radnor) makes me laugh out loud every time), and multiple amusing characteristics that the actor delivers with perfection.
Also, since I'm discussing this character on my blog for the first time, I must give a shout-out to How I Met Your Mother's writers for making one of the most genius writing decisions of all time: The Captain ending up together with the "Boats! Boats! Boats!" girl (Laura Bell Bundy), who was originally a totally unrelated side character from a different storyline. Pure brilliance.
5. Mr. C in Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
Yet another separate performance by MacLachlan in Twin Peaks: The Return. This role is hard to discuss without spoilers, as it has to do with a major twist at the end of Twin Peaks's original run. Let's just say that for psychedelic and Lynchian reasons, the actor plays a villainous role in The Return, but don't worry - everyone's favorite FBI agent hasn't gone bad, but rather this villain is a whole different character from Dale Cooper (much like the aforementioned Dougie Jones).
This is as extreme as MacLachlan's good-evil range of characters he can play has gone, and boy, is it extreme. The character referred to by fans as Mr. C is cold-blooded and frightening, and it's amazing how believable the actor is in such a role, in the context of the very same series where we're used to seeing his face in the ultimate good-guy role of Dale Cooper.
4. Claudius in Hamlet (2000)
Speaking of Kyle MacLachlan killing it in villainous roles, this modern take on Shakespeare's Hamlet features him in the role of Claudius, the protagonist's uncle and one of the most classic villains in all of literature. The shoes of such an iconic character are large ones to fill, but the casting choice couldn't have been better, as MacLachlan takes on the role with just the right kind of cold-blooded magnificence that goes with such a role. Arrogant, fearsome and truly despicable in the role while still having a subtle layer of humanity to bring out all sides of the character, the performance is nothing short of amazing.
3. Paul Atreides in Dune (1984)
Speaking of living up to an iconic role from literature that poses challenges for any talented actor, well, Dune. There are many things that David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel failed at, but one of the things it got very right was the casting of a young and largely unknown Kyle MacLachlan as main character Paul Atreides, in what would become his breakthrough role.
MacLachlan's unique energy, complex acting skill and overall ability to excel in heroic roles make him the perfect Paul Atreides - now that one of my generation's most talented actors, Timothée Chalamet, has been cast as Atreides in Denis Villeneuve's upcoming Dune film, I'm excited to compare these two takes on the character with one another.
2. Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986)
My favorite director was so impressed with MacLachlan's work in Dune, that he cast him for the lead role in his next film, which turned out to be one of my favorite movies of all time - Blue Velvet. And from this partnership can be found the core of why the top 3 of this list consists entirely of performances in David Lynch productions - the two of them work incredibly well together, and Lynch's directing brings out the best in MacLachlan. Lynch has a very unique and difficult way of directing, which is why some actors have absolutely hated working with him and many conventional-skilled actors don't exactly shine in his films - but certain types of actors fit David Lynch like a glove.
I've seen enough interviews where Kyle MacLachlan talks about working with Lynch to realize that he truly understands the director and his vision better than most, and therefore he is the perfect man to play the challenging lead roles in works like Blue Velvet. He brings an immense amount of curiosity and likability to the role of Jeffrey Beaumont, and his overall energy fits the strange experimentality of Lynch's directorial style beautifully. Speaking of which...
1. Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks (1990-1991), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) and Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
I'm not exaggerating when I say that Dale Cooper is my favorite fictional character of all time. I've actually made a list of the best characters from all literature, theater, film and television (because of course I have), and he ended up in first place. While this is thanks to many factors, one of them certainly is that the role was brought to life by an actor who played the part with unparalleled enthusiasm and likability.
It's astonishing to cross-reference MacLachlan's villain roles like Claudius and Mr. C to his main role in Twin Peaks, where he plays just the most lovable and heroic character there is. While the performance is impressive enough by conventional acting merits (he shows a lot of emotional range and growth especially in season 2), it's the unconventional way of acting in a way that fits a David Lynch production that really makes it so impressive. One of the main themes in Twin Peaks is the idea of the "light within the dark", which comes across brilliantly from the way MacLachlan plays the lead role - the series is filled with violence, disturbing imagery and nightmarish surrealism, yet it's still one of the most fun and cozy shows to watch, and that is largely thanks to the character of Dale Cooper.
From his very first scene in the pilot episode, MacLachlan stole the show with his character's unbridled optimism, constant words of wisdom and peculiar methods of investigation. Every line is delivered with just the right energy, and the existence of this character (much thanks to the actor playing him) has made the world (or at least my world) a better place.
Thank you for reading! Starting next week, I'll be doing something a bit different - for March 2021, my blog will be doing "Literature Month". Every post in March will be a top 10 -list relating to literature, differing from my usual movie/TV themes. Literature Month begins next Thursday with my list of the top 10 books by J.R.R. Tolkien!
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