Kyle MacLachlan

In addition to Twin Peaks, 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), Calvin Johnson on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2014–2015), and Hank MacLean on Fallout (2024–present).

Kyle MacLachlan studied at University of Washington and Eisenhower High School. The recorded working language is English. Residence is recorded at Los Angeles and New York City. Works named in the authority record are Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Desperate Housewives, The Flintstones, Inside Out, The Good Wife and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Distinctions recorded are Golden Globe Awards and Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television.

MacLachlan was born Kyle McLachlan at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital in Yakima, Washington. 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. His father, Kent Alan McLachlan (1933–2011), was a stockbroker and lawyer. Kyle has Scottish, German and Cornish ancestry. He grew up in Yakima as the eldest of three boys, alongside his younger brothers, Craig and Kent Jr. 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. 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.

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. MacLachlan made his film debut in Dune (1984) in the starring role of Paul Atreides. MacLachlan was performing in Molière's Tartuffe at a Seattle-area theater when a casting agent for Dune producer Dino De Laurentiis began searching for a young lead and received multiple recommendations for him. 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. This marked the beginning of a creative partnership between MacLachlan and Lynch, who would go on to collaborate on four more projects before Lynch's death in 2025. 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. Lynch cast MacLachlan in the starring role of Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet (1986), which was received more positively. 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. He starred in the 1987 science fiction action film The Hidden as FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher. He also had a small role in the romantic comedy Don't Tell Her It's Me.

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 who had a "monumental impact" on him. Lynch, who was 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. He had previously turned down Stone's offer to play Chris in the 1986 movie Platoon, which ultimately went to Charlie Sheen. Also, in 1991, he played the role of a killer in Tales from the Crypt. 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 co-starred with Samuel L. Jackson as a rookie prison guard in John Frankenheimer's 1994 Emmy-winning HBO film Against the Wall about the Attica prison riots. In 1994, he was also featured in The Flintstones, a live-action movie adaptation of the animated sitcom of the same name, portraying Cliff Vandercave, the movie's main antagonist, opposite John Goodman as Fred Flintstone and Rick Moranis as Barney Rubble. In 1995, MacLachlan starred in Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls. The movie was heavily panned by critics, and it collected a record seven Golden Raspberry Awards. MacLachlan recalls that when he watched Showgirls for the first time before the premiere, he thought it was "horrible". But he later realised that the movie was "inadvertently funny" and embraced for its campiness. According to MacLachlan, although he skipped the movie's press tour, he had sat through the whole screening, contrary to reports that he walked out.

From 2000 to 2002, MacLachlan had a recurring role in the American television series Sex and the City, portraying Dr. Trey MacDougal, the one-time husband of Charlotte York (Kristin Davis). MacLachlan played King Claudius in the 2000 film Hamlet based on William Shakespeare's play. In the video game Grand Theft Auto III released in 2001, he voiced the character of the sociopathic real-estate developer Donald Love. In 2002, he made his West End debut in John Kolvenbach's On an Average Day with Woody Harrelson. In 2003, MacLachlan made his Broadway debut as Aston in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker with Patrick Stewart. He portrayed the spirit of Cary Grant in the 2004 film Touch of Pink. His resemblance to Grant had been previously noted in an episode of Twin Peaks. That same year he also had a guest role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in which he played a psychiatrist who shot and killed a sociopathic child who had murdered his son. He was a guest star in the show again in 2011, as a politician whose son is involved in a rape accusation. In 2006, after starring in the short-lived In Justice, MacLachlan appeared in Desperate Housewives as the mysterious dentist Orson Hodge. He first appeared during the show's second season, and became a full-time cast member at the start of season three. In 2007, MacLachlan was one of the presenters at the London leg of Live Earth benefit concerts. He appeared in the 2008 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. In the American English version of the cult 2006 Norwegian animated film Free Jimmy released in 2008, he voiced the character of "Marius", a militant animal rights activist.

In 2010, after four years of playing Orson Hodge, MacLachlan decided to leave Desperate Housewives as he found the commute from his home in New York City to the set in Los Angeles increasingly difficult since becoming a father in 2008. However, he returned as a guest star in 2012 for season eight, the final season of Desperate Housewives. He also guest starred as George "The Captain" Van Smoot in seasons six, eight and nine of How I Met Your Mother, from 2010 until 2014. He would reprise the role in the first season of the spinoff How I Met Your Father in 2022. From 2011 to 2018, he played the role of Mayor of Portland, Oregon, in the IFC comedy Portlandia. In 2013 and 2014 he appeared as prosecutor Josh Perotti in four episodes of The Good Wife. In 2014 and 2015 he appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as villain Calvin Johnson / The Doctor. In 2015, he voiced Riley Anderson's father in the Pixar animated feature Inside Out. In January 2015, it was announced that MacLachlan would return as Special Agent Dale Cooper for the new limited television series Twin Peaks: The Return, which debuted on May 21, 2017. He received a Saturn Award for his performance. In an interview, MacLachlan said he doesn't understand all of Twin Peaks, and that fans understand it much more than him. In 2018, MacLachlan starred as Isaac Izard, the main antagonist in the fantasy-horror family film The House with a Clock in its Walls. In 2019, he appeared as a team owner in Steven Soderbergh's High Flying Bird which was shot entirely on the iPhone 8. Later that year, he co-starred in Carol's Second Act, from the writers of Booksmart. The series was canceled in 2020. At the 11th Annual Governors Awards, held on October 27, 2019, MacLachlan and his Blue Velvet co-star Laura Dern paid tribute to their friend and collaborator David Lynch, who received an Academy Honorary Award for his work.

In 2020, he reunited with his Hamlet co-star Ethan Hawke, portraying Thomas Edison opposite Hawke's Tesla. Later that year, he made an uncredited cameo appearance in HBO's How To with John Wilson, which Vulture described as "a glorious 14 seconds". He then portrayed Franklin D. Roosevelt in Atlantic Crossing, which aired on Masterpiece in 2021. In 2022, MacLachlan co-starred with Jon Hamm in Confess, Fletch and was also cast as Chief Justice Earl Warren in Miranda's Victim. From 2023 to 2024, he returned to voiceover work with a guest-starring role on Hulu's Futurama and reprised his role as Riley's dad in Pixar's Inside Out 2 and Disney+'s Dream Productions. MacLachlan also co-hosted and co-created PodcastOne's Varnamtown podcast with Epic Magazine co-founder Joshua Davis. The true crime series explores Varnamtown, North Carolina's ties to Pablo Escobar. In 2024, he was honored with the Canal+ Icon Award at Canneseries ahead of his role in Amazon's Fallout, the adaptation of the popular video game series. It was quickly renewed for a second season in April 2024 followed by an early renewal for a third season in May 2025. In a review of the second season, The Seattle Times wrote that his increased screen time "gives the great actor room to be both goofy and menacing in equal measure, even when he’s not saying a word." In September 2024, he was cast alongside Connie Britton in Overcompensating, a college-set comedy series created by and starring Benito Skinner. The series premiered in May 2025 to positive reviews and was renewed for a second season in September 2025. In January 2025, the WGAW announced that MacLachlan would posthumously present the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement to David Lynch, who had died earlier that month. MacLachlan had previously honored his longtime friend and collaborator with tributes in The New York Times, GQ and on his personal Instagram account, where he wrote, "I was willing to follow him anywhere because joining him on the journey of discovery, searching and finding together, was the whole point. I stepped out into the unknown because I knew David was floating out there with me. It's like Agent Cooper says to Sheriff Truman in Twin Peaks: 'I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.' I will miss my dear friend. He has made my world—all of our worlds—both wonderful and strange". In September 2025, MacLachlan appeared once again alongside his Hamlet and Tesla co-star Ethan Hawke in FX’s The Lowdown, a new series from Reservation Dogs creator Sterlin Harjo. That same month, MacLachlan launched his second podcast, What Are We Even Doing?, a weekly series in which he interviews younger actors and artists about their creative processes. Distributed by iHeartRadio’s Elvis Duran Podcast Network, the podcast has featured guests such as Kaia Gerber, Dylan O’Brien, Benito Skinner, and Caleb Hearon.

MacLachlan's mother died of ovarian cancer in 1986, aged 52, shortly before Blue Velvet was released. She had been diagnosed while he was filming Dune in 1983, and delayed informing him of the diagnosis. His father died of post-surgery complications in 2011.

MacLachlan dated his Blue Velvet co-star Laura Dern from 1985 to 1989. Subsequently, he was in a relationship with Twin Peaks co-star Lara Flynn Boyle from 1990 to 1992. In 1992, after his relationship with Boyle ended, he began a relationship with supermodel Linda Evangelista after they met at a photo shoot they did together for Barneys New York. According to MacLachlan, they had been engaged for a few years when their six-year relationship ended in 1998.

In 1999, he met and began a relationship with publicist Desiree Gruber. Gruber runs her own public relations agency; she became an executive producer of Project Runway in 2004. MacLachlan moved to New York City because he was filming Sex and the City and Gruber was based there. They were married on April 20, 2002. Their son was born on July 25, 2008. The family has residences in Los Angeles and New York.

In 2024, MacLachlan’s Instagram and TikTok accounts gained attention for his engagement with viral trends and popular culture. His posts, which featured music and inspiration from artists like Lorde, Chappell Roan, and Charli XCX's Brat, received positive reactions from the artists themselves. Multiple publications praised his ability to connect with a Gen-Z audience and affectionately elevated him to "babygirl" status.