Why Dale Cooper From Twin Peaks Looks So Familiar

Kyle MacLachlan got his big break from David Lynch, who cast MacLachlan in Dune as Paul Atreides, the son of a powerful aristocratic family and hero of the story. Dune is a famously impossible book to adapt to the big screen, and despite Lynch's considerable talent, the movie wasn't a success, panned by critics and a box office dud. But it made a huge difference in MacLachlan's career. 

When they met during casting, MacLachlan and Lynch hit it off instantly, and it led to a long collaboration, including MacLachlan's Twin Peaks role as Dale Cooper. While Dune was a failure, MacLachlan is a good sport about it, posting a tweet describing the plot of the movie in emojis. It's a really good summary, and one of the better things to come from the movie.

Toward the end of his first Twin Peaks run in 1991, MacLachlan starred in Oliver Stone's biopic The Doors, which told the story of the titular band. MacLachlan played Doors co-founder Ray Manzarek opposite Val Kilmer, who starred as frontman Jim Morrison. MacLachlan has admitted that he wasn't a huge fan of the group, but he learned to appreciate their music, specifically Manzarek's piano playing. In fact, MacLachlan had studied piano, and the movie gave him an excuse to get back into it, learning many of Manzarek's parts. 

The movie received a lukewarm critical reception, but MacLachlan professed to love filming The Doors—specifically feeling like a member of a real rock band during the performance scenes, which were shot in front of a crowd of 4,000.

MacLachlan has said he took the role of Zack Carey in Showgirls mainly because he loved director Paul Verhoeven's earlier films, including RoboCop. Unfortunately, instead of a classic sci-fi satire, he ended up starring in a softcore drama that became one of the most widely derided movies of the '90s. While filming Showgirls, MacLachlan didn't really have a grasp on the movie's problems, but looking back, he's admitted that when he saw the first cut, he realized it was a mess.

"It's a very slow, sinking feeling when you're watching the movie, and the first scene comes out, and you're like, 'Oh, that's a really bad scene,'" he recalled. "But you say, 'Well, that's okay, the next one'll be better.' And you somehow try to convince yourself that it's going to get better... and it just gets worse."

After finishing his Sex and the City run, MacLachlan returned to the world of fictional law enforcement with two guest appearances on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. In his 2004 episode "Conscience" he starred as Dr. Brett Morton, who takes justice into his own hands by shooting the murderer that killed his son. Dr. Morton is acquitted after the court decides he wasn't in control during the shooting, making him one of the show's few perps to walk free.

Seven years later, MacLachlan returned to the show to star in the episode "Blood Brothers" as a local politician (inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger) who's caught in a murderous scandal. MacLachlan has saids he was better prepared for this episode than he was for his first, and appreciated the opportunity to tackle a deeper character. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), MacLachlan didn't attempt a Schwarzenegger accent.

Taking one of his occasional stabs at comedy, MacLachlan appeared in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother as the boat-obsessed George Van Smoot, also known as the Captain. Introduced on the show when the Captain met Arthur Hobbs during a showing of Guys and Dolls, he turned out to be Zoey's ex-husband and father of her stepdaughter. Although he admitted he wasn't familiar with the show prior to joining the cast, MacLachlan praised the writing as "brilliant," and expressed dismay at the Captain's limited number of appearances. "I was sad that it was only a few episodes," he told the A.V. Club. "I felt like in the third one I was finally getting my stride and had figured it out a little bit, his eccentricity."

Calvin Zabo gave MacLachlan a chance to play a comic book villain—an eccentric doctor who takes a cocktail of various drugs (including gorilla testosterone and a touch of peppermint) to give him super strength. Married to the Inhuman Jiaying, Zabo fights against S.H.I.E.L.D.—but as MacLachlan told Coming Soon, part of the key to his portrayal was the fact that he didn't regard the character as a villain at his core. "As I progressed through the filming, he got richer and deeper," he recalled. "On television, they parse out the information slowly. As I learned more and more about the character, it got more and more exciting."