Jack Nance(1943-1996)
- Actor
Born in Boston of Irish ancestry and raised in Dallas, Jack Nance
traveled throughout the country doing children's theater. For eight
years, he performed with the American Conservatory Theater in San
Francisco. Later, he became involved with avant-garde theater. He first
met David Lynch in the early 1970s
in Philadelphia while he was performing in a local theater, and Lynch
decided to cast him as the lead in
Eraserhead (1977). Originally, it was
to be a six-week shooting project, but due to budget restrictions and
technical complications, the production and filming took nearly five
years to complete. Nance relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1980s,
where he appeared in unusual and widely praised films that were not
always considered mainstream Hollywood. He has appeared in almost every
movie by Lynch, including the television series
Twin Peaks (1990), usually playing
secondary characters or quirky supporting parts. Nance died suddenly
and unexpectedly on December 30, 1996 from an apparent internal head
injury the morning after getting into a physical brawl at a donut shop
with some rowdy patrons.
