Laura Dern is remembering her longtime collaborator and friend David Lynch on his 79th birth anniversary.
The Oscar winner, 57, took to Instagram on Monday with a wholesome birthday tribute to the late filmmaker, who was announced dead at age 78 on January 16.
“Happy birthday, tidbit,” the Oscar winner wrote in the caption of a photo of them together.
Dern added, “I will love and miss you every day for the rest of my life.”
Dern and Lynch were longtime collaborators as the four-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker first cast the then-17-year-old actress in 1986 for mystery-thriller Blue Velvet.
The director-actor duo then reunited for 1990’s Wild Heart and later for his experimental feature Inland Empire in 2006 and his 2017 revival of the series Twin Peaks.
Dern once credited Lynch for helping her avoid being typecast in films.
“It was an amazing gift that a filmmaker who knows you would say,” she told Greta Gerwig on Inside the Actors Studio in 2019, adding with an impression of Lynch, “‘Now I want you to play the complete opposite of what you did last time.’”
Lynch also campaigned for Dern to earn an Oscar nomination in 2006 for her work in Inland Empire, People Magazine reported.
