“It was a perfect fit from the very beginning,” Mr. Lynch said in a phone interview. “Kyle is a great actor. He can play somebody quite pure and quite spiritual, and he can go to the opposite extreme.”

“Dune” turned out to be one of the biggest flops of the 1980s, but it led to Mr. Lynch’s placing Mr. MacLachlan in “Blue Velvet,” which the National Society of Film Critics named the best film of 1986 and has since gone on to appear on numerous lists of the greatest movies of all time.

Then came their collaboration on “Twin Peaks,” which focused on a small-town It Girl whose murder is being investigated by an F.B.I. agent. The show was unlike anything that had ever appeared on network TV and garnered critical praise and Emmy nominations for its cast members, including Mr. MacLachlan. Then, with Mr. Lynch and Mr. Frost leaving the running of the series to others, it went off the rails in the second season, and ABC canceled it.

“I was angry with him at the time,” Mr. MacLachlan said of Mr. Lynch in a 2003 interview.

His career suffered for a while. In 1995, Mr. MacLachlan starred in Paul Verhoeven’s “Showgirls,” whose embrace by drag queens and cineaste contrarians only seemed to confirm its grand prize status as the decade’s most reviled film. “I remember seeing the movie for the first time in disbelief of how bad it was,” Mr. MacLachlan said. “But what you do in your brain is you say: ‘It’s got to get better. The next scene is going to get better.’ And then your hopes are dashed in the next scene.”