Laura Dern Remembers David Lynch On His Birthday: “I Will Love And Miss You Every Day”​on January 21, 2025 at 2:28 am

Laura Dern is remembering collaborator and friend David Lynch on what would have marked his 79th birthday.

“Happy birthday, tidbit,” Dern wrote on Instagram alongside a warm picture of the two. “I will love and miss you every day for the rest of my life.” (The visionary director was especially fond of nicknames for his many muses: Dern is “tidbit,” Naomi Watts is “buttercup,” Patricia Arquette is “solid gold” and Kyle MacLachlan is “kale.”)

Dern worked with Lynch across three films, beginning with 1986’s mystery-thriller Blue Velvet, in which she plays Sandy Williams — a detective’s daughter who becomes embroiled in an investigation connected to a severed ear — opposite MacLachlan’s leading man. Though Dern had been acting for over a decade before the crime flick’s release, the role — along with her turn in 1985’s Mask — marked her breakout.

Four years later, she appeared as Lula alongside Nicolas Cage‘s Sailor in 1990’s Wild at Heart, a crime romance based on Barry Gifford’s novel of the same name, which follows a young couple on the lam from various hitmen hired by Lula’s domineering mother.

Additionally, the Big Little Lies actress collaborated with Lynch on psychological thriller Inland Empire (2006), as well as Showtime’s third season of Twin Peaks, set 25 years after the original ’90s ABC series.

Co-stars MacLachlan and Cage were among the flurry of tributes that poured in following Lynch’s death Jan. 15.

“Forty-two years ago, for reasons beyond my comprehension, David Lynch plucked me out of obscurity to star in his first and last big budget movie. He clearly saw something in me that even I didn’t recognize. I owe my entire career, and life really, to his vision,” MacLachlan wrote in a post.

Cage said of his experience filming Wild at Heart: “He was brave, brilliant, and a maverick with a joyful sense of humor. I never had more fun on a film set than working with David Lynch. He will always be solid gold.”

Dern’s tribute comes as his children asked folks around the world to join them in a “worldwide group meditation” for 10 minutes earlier today to honor the filmmaker on his birthday.