Kyle MacLachlan

His father, Kent Alan McLachlan (1933–2011), was a stockbroker and lawyer.

Kyle has Scottish, Cornish, and German ancestry.

He grew up in Yakima, the eldest of three boys.

His two younger brothers, Craig and Kent Jr., live in the Seattle area.

MacLachlan graduated from Eisenhower High School in Yakima.

His mother left his father when he was 17, and his parents divorced in his senior year of high school.

MacLachlan was introduced to stage acting by his mother when she became director of a youth theater program for teenagers that she helped set up in Yakima.

She also sent him to piano lessons from the age of 9 to 14, when he also began to study classical singing.

While in high school, he performed in plays and in class musicals, acting in his first play at age 15.

In his senior year, he had the lead role of Brindsley Miller in a production of Peter Shaffer's one-act play Black Comedy, and performed as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.

His mother, Catherine (née Stone; 1934–1986), was a public relations director for a school district and a homemaker who was active in community arts programs.

Kyle MacLachlan (born February 22, 1959) is an American actor.

He is best recognized for his work with American filmmaker David Lynch.

The first film MacLachlan worked on was The Changeling (1980), part of which was shot on the University of Washington campus.

He was paid $10 as an extra.

In the summer of 1981, after his sophomore year at college, he played the lead in three roles at the Old Lyric Repertory Theatre in Logan, Utah and the following summer with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.

In 1982, he graduated cum laude with a BFA in drama from the University of Washington (UW) as a student of the Professional Actor Training Program.

He initially planned to major in business and also studied classical voice at UW, but changed his focus to acting.

Further collaborations include his portrayals for Lynch of Paul Atreides in Dune (1984) and Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986).

MacLachlan made his film debut in Dune (1984) in the starring role of Paul Atreides.

While still in college, MacLachlan was appearing in Molière's Tartuffe in a Seattle-area theater.

A casting agent for Dune producer Dino De Laurentiis was looking for a young actor to star in the film, and multiple people recommended MacLachlan.

After several screen tests, he hit it off with director David Lynch, aided by their common Pacific Northwest backgrounds, and succeeded in winning the part.

After Dune flopped and met with poor reviews from critics, MacLachlan found it difficult to find work.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1985, and auditioned for several films, including Top Gun, but failed to win any roles, eventually dropping his agent, Creative Artists Agency.

Finally, Lynch cast MacLachlan in the starring role of Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986), which was received more positively.

He had previously turned down Stone's offer to play Chris in the 1986 movie Platoon, which ultimately went to Charlie Sheen.

MacLachlan's other film roles include Lloyd Gallagher in The Hidden (1987), Ray Manzarek in The Doors (1991), Cliff Vandercave in The Flintstones (1994), Zack Carey in Showgirls (1995) and the voice of Riley's father in Inside Out (2015).

He starred in the 1987 science fiction action film The Hidden as FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher.

The most widely known of these collaborations were MacLachlan's performances as Dale Cooper: first on the television series Twin Peaks in 1990 and 1991 and again in 2017, for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama; he also portrayed Cooper in the program's theatrical film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992).

MacLachlan further collaborated with Lynch in the ABC television series Twin Peaks (1990–91), playing Special Agent Dale Cooper, reprising that role for Lynch's 1992 prequel film 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."

MacLachlan also said he considered Lynch one of his mentors that had a "monumental impact" on him.

Lynch, who is known to allow his collaborative partners a large degree of control over their roles when working with him, rewrote scenes in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks at the request of MacLachlan, who felt they were not right for his characters.

MacLachlan appeared as musician Ray Manzarek in Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors, about the band of the same name.

In the 1993 film version of Franz Kafka's The Trial, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, MacLachlan played the lead role of the persecuted Josef K.

MacLachlan has had prominent roles on television such as Trey MacDougal on Sex and the City (2000–2002), Orson Hodge on Desperate Housewives (2006–2012), The Captain on How I Met Your Mother (2010–2014) and How I Met Your Father (2022), the Mayor of Portland on Portlandia (2011–2018), and Calvin Johnson on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2014–2015).

MacLachlan was born Kyle McLachlan (subsequently changing the spelling of his last name to reflect his Scottish heritage) at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital in Yakima, Washington.

Reflecting on his enduring relationship with Lynch in a 2012 interview, MacLachlan remarked: "David Lynch plucked me from obscurity. He cast me as the lead in Dune and Blue Velvet, and people have seen me as this boy-next-door-cooking-up-something-weird-in-the-basement ever since."

Lynch biographer Chris Rodley described MacLachlan as an on-screen incarnation of Lynch's own persona.