Isabella Rossellini has paid tribute to the late David Lynch, who died on Thursday at 78.
The legendary actress, who had her breakthrough role in Lynch’s 1986 film “Blue Velvet” and was in a roughly five-year relationship with the director afterwards, shared a photo of the two of them on Friday morning with the simple caption: “I loved him so much. Thanks for all your kind messages.”
In addition to “Blue Velvet,” Rossellini also appeared in Lynch’s 1990 film “Wild at Heart,” which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival (where the two are pictured above).
Rossellini and Lynch met during the casting process for “Blue Velvet.” According to legend, Lynch said to Rossellini, “Hey, you know, you could be the daughter of Ingrid Bergman,” unaware that she actually was. She was eventually cast as Dorothy Vallens, a lounge singer whose son and husband have been kidnapped by a criminal in exchange for sexual favors. The film earned Lynch an Oscar nomination for best director.
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The two went public with their relationship after their respective divorces; Lynch from his second wife Mary Fisk and Rossellini from her second husband Jonathan Wiedemann. They played lovers in Tina Rathborne’s 1988 drama “Zelly and Me” and attended Cannes Film Festival together in 1990 to promote “Wild at Heart,” in which Rossellini played Perdita Durango, an old acquaintance of Sailor (Nicolas Cage). They parted ways the next year.
Other Lynch muses have also been sharing remembrances of the director, including Rossellini’s “Blue Velvet” co-star and “Twin Peaks” lead Kyle MacLachlan.
“I owe my entire career, and life really, to his vision,” MacLachlan wrote Thursday in an Instagram post. “What I saw in him was an enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative ocean bursting forth inside of him. He was in touch with something the rest of us wish we could get to.”
“Mulholland Drive” breakout Naomi Watts also posted an emotional tribute on Instagram, crediting Lynch with putting her on the map.
“His creative mentorship was truly powerful,” Watts wrote. “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?!”