When Rebekah Del Rio first met David Lynch at his home in Los Angeles, he asked her to sing for him. He'd just bought a very expensive Telefunken microphone – there were only a few of them in the world, he told her – and wanted to see what it could do.

"It was exactly like I had stepped into the 1950s," the Mexican-American singer and actor says.

She entered the vocal booth in his home studio and sang Llorando for him – her Spanish take on Roy Orbison's Crying. Afterwards, she recalls, he said: "Damn, Rebekah Del Rio – that was aces!"

Rebekah del Rio.

Unbeknownst to the then 20-something Del Rio, Lynch had recorded her. She got a call from her agent some months later, who told her the Twin Peaks director was so "obsessed" with the song that he'd written a whole part for her in an upcoming film.