Sheryl Lee

Sheryl Lee (born April 22, 1967) is an American actress. After studying acting in college, Lee relocated to Seattle, Washington to work in theater, where she was cast by David Lynch as Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson on the 1990 television series Twin Peaks and in the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. After completing Twin Peaks, she returned to theater, appearing in the title role of Salome on Broadway opposite Al Pacino.

Her film roles include Astrid Kirchherr in Backbeat (1994), Helga/Resi Noth in the drama Mother Night (1996), the role of Katrina in John Carpenter's Vampires (1998) and the part of April in Winter's Bone (2010). She has had recurring roles on such television series as One Tree Hill (2005–06) and Dirty Sexy Money (2007–2009), and later reprised her role of Laura Palmer in the Showtime revival of Twin Peaks in 2017.

Lee was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, West Germany to an artist mother and architect father; the first of three children. She grew up in Boulder, Colorado, United States, where she was a graduate of Fairview High School (class of 1985). After graduating, Lee moved to Pasadena, California where she studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and later attended the North Carolina School of the Arts, the National Theatre Conservatory in Denver, and the University of Colorado.

After several years of studying, Lee moved to Seattle, Washington where she acted in several stage plays and appeared in several commercials. She studied with theater director Mark Jenkins at the now-defunct Empty Space Theater in Seattle.

Lee's first television role was as the dead Laura Palmer in the television series Twin Peaks. To save on money, creator David Lynch intended to cast a local girl from Seattle "just to play a dead girl". That local girl ended up being Sheryl Lee. Lynch asked her to audition for him after seeing a publicity photo of her in Seattle from one of the plays she was starring in at the time. "But no one — not Mark, me, anyone — had any idea that she could act, or that she was going to be so powerful just being dead." The image of Lee wrapped in plastic, as well as her homecoming queen photograph, became among the show's most enduring and memorable images. When Lynch shot the home movie that James Hurley takes of Donna Hayward and Laura, he realized that Lee had something special. "She did do another scene — the video with Donna on the picnic — and it was that scene that did it." As a result, Sheryl Lee became a semi-regular addition to the cast, appearing in flashbacks as Laura, and becoming a recurring character, Laura's cousin Maddy Ferguson, later in the series (a role which was reportedly written because Lynch, impressed with her abilities, wanted to give her a fuller role on the show). She worked again with Lynch when she appeared as Glinda the Good Witch in Wild at Heart (1990).

She also starred in the prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which elaborated on events leading up to Laura Palmer's death. While the film itself was a critical and financial failure at the time of its release, Lee was praised by the critics for her performance, which earned her Best Actress nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards and the Saturn Awards. For her work in Twin Peaks, Lee has been described as a "Scream queen", in particular for scenes in the otherworldly Black Lodge.

In 1992, Lee starred as Salome alongside Al Pacino in the Broadway production of Oscar Wilde's Salome in the Circle in the Square Theatre under the direction of Robert Allan Ackerman. The play co-starred Suzanne Bertish, Esai Morales and Arnold Vosloo.

In 1994, she was cast as Astrid Kirchherr in the film Backbeat, a biopic of the early career of The Beatles opposite Stephen Dorff. The following years, Lee played the part of Liza in Gary Walkow's 1995 adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella Notes from Underground opposite Henry Czerny, the role of Helga and Resi Noth in the 1996 romantic war film Mother Night, based on Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 novel of the same name, starred alongside Craig Sheffer in Bliss (1997) and played the role of Katrina in John Carpenter's 1998 film Vampires opposite James Woods and Daniel Baldwin. She played also a leading role in the 1999 crime drama film Angel's Dance with Kyle Chandler and Jim Belushi and starred as Dr. Sarah Church in the short-lived series L.A. Doctors (1998—1999) which ran for a single season.