Kyle MacLachlan

Born: February 22, 1960
Where: Yakima, Washington, USA

MacLachan may be a familiar face thanks to David Lynch's Blue Velvet and the pie-craving FBI agent in Twin Peaks ...but it could have all been so different.

Cast as a young actor in Lynch's sci-fi blockbuster Dune, the movie and his turn as a mystical action hero got such a critical mauling he didn't work in film for two years.

After actor-training at Washington University in Seattle, he was spotted in regional theatre by producer Dino de Laurentis, looking for a young actor for 1983's Dune.

After Dune's release, MacLachlan moved to Los Angeles, a time he describes as "like a ship, you could feel it going down. I just kept saying, it'll be OK, I just need to get a second picture."

He enlisted the aid of a public relations firm, dropped his agent, and auditioned for a number of films, including Top Gun.

Finally, Lynch got the go-ahead on 1986's Blue Velvet and cast his favourite leading man again. MacLachan redeemed himself with his portrayal of a teenage sleuth in small town America.

Then came Twin Peaks, Lynch's foray into TV that propelled the director into cult orbit and transformed MacLachlan into an enigmatic heart-throb and won him a Best Actor Golden Globe.

"Kyle's chipper-looking, quirky and handsome," says Lynch. "He looks intelligent and dashing like Errol Flynn but with a humour underlying that dashingness."

That launched MacLachlan into a slate of films, but not always the good choices. He was fine as keyboardist Ray Manzarek in Oliver Stone's Jim Morrison biopic, The Doors but didn't quite work as the tormented Joseph K in Franz Kafka's The Trial.

He took a break from his dark side in The Flintstones but the disastrous Showgirls replaced Dune as the worst movie he'd ever made.

MacLachlan turned in some of his best work of the 90s for the small screen - as a naive, rookie prison guard taken hostage in Against the Wall and alien drama Roswell.

Returning to features, MacLachlan offered a featured performance as a slick Hollywood agent in Mike Figgis' Time Code, where four digital cameras captured different scenes simultaneously.

Subsequent roles include Me Without You opposite Anna Friel and the lacklustre Britpic Miranda with Christina Ricci.

On TV, one of MacLachlan's popular roles has to be as a recurring love interest for Kristin Davis' Charlotte in sitcom Sex and the City.

The couple met in dramatic fashion with his yuppie surgeon enjoying a Prince Charming moment by coming to Charlotte's rescue when she nearly gets hit by a cab.

Romantically, he's been linked to actresses Laura Dern and Lara Flynn Boyle and was briefly engaged to supermodel Linda Evangelista in 1996.

On his success he concludes: "I have this thing that people actually go for, or they don't, playing characters with a secret side."

Upcoming projects include the Polish brothers' drama Northfork about the residents of a Montana community moved to make way for a dam.