David Lynch Remembered By Laura Dern and More

Beloved filmmaker David Lynch died on January 15, and when his family broke the news the next day, Hollywood’s grief mourned the loss of the great director, including the stars of his many films. Laura Dern, an essential actress in the Lynch universe, remembered him on his birthday, January 20. “Happy birthday, tidbit. I will love and miss you every day for the rest of my life,” she wrote in the post with a photo of the two looking into each other’s eyes. Isabella Rossellini, his ex-partner, paid tribute on Instagram. “I loved him so much,” she wrote in the caption of her post, alongside a picture of her and Lynch. “Thanks for all your kind messages.”

Nicolas Cage, who starred in Lynch’s Wild at Heart, told Deadline the director was “a singular genius in cinema” and fondly looked back on their laughs working together. “He was brave, brilliant, and a maverick with a joyful sense of humor,” Cage added. “I never had more fun on a film set than working with David Lynch. He will always be solid gold.” Kyle Maclachlan remembered the beginnings of his long career working with Lynch when they first met on Dune: “He clearly saw something in me that even I didn’t recognize. I owe my entire career, and life really, to his vision.”

Mulholland Drive star Naomi Watts thanked Lynch for her breakout role in his film on Instagram, sharing a sweet photo of her kissing him on the cheek. “His creative mentorship was truly powerful,” she wrote. “He put me on the map. The world I’d been trying to break into for ten plus years, flunking auditions left and right. Finally, I sat in front of a curious man, beaming with light, speaking words from another era, making me laugh and feel at ease. How did he even ‘see me’ when I was so well hidden, and I’d even lost sight of myself?!”

Below, more tributes from directors like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese as well as Lynch-ian stars including Lee Grant and Rebekah del Rio.

In a statement to Variety, Spielberg remembered Lynch as a “visionary,” writing, “I loved David’s films. ‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Elephant Man’ defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade. I got to know David when he played John Ford in ‘The Fabelmans.’ Here was one of my heroes—David Lynch playing one of my heroes. It was surreal and seemed like a scene out of one of David’s own movies. The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test of time and they always will.”

In a statement to Indiewire, Scorcese explains why Lynch was the true definition of visionary: “I hear and read the word ‘visionary’ a lot these days—it’s become a kind of catch-all description, another piece of promotional language. But David Lynch really was a visionary—in fact, the word could have been invented to describe the man and the films, the series, the images and the sounds he left behind. He created forms that seemed like they were right on the edge of falling apart but somehow never did. He put images on the screen unlike anything that I or anybody else had ever seen—he made everything strange, uncanny, revelatory and new. And he was absolutely uncompromising, from start to finish. It’s a sad, sad day for moviemakers, movie lovers, and for the art of cinema. But Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, the two Twin Peaks series and the film Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire… as the years and the decades go by, they will just keep growing and deepening. We were lucky to have had David Lynch.”