Laura Palmer

To save on money, Lynch intended to cast a local girl from Seattle "just to play a dead girl".^[4] The local girl ended up being Sheryl Lee. "But no one — not Mark, me, anyone — had any idea that she could act, or that she was going to be so powerful just being dead."^[4]Indeed, the image of Lee wrapped in plastic became one of the show's most enduring and memorable images. When Lynch shot the home movie that James takes of Donna and Laura, he realized that Lee had something special. "She did do another scene — the video with Donna on the picnic — and it was that scene that did it."^[4] As a result, Sheryl Lee became a semi-regular addition to the cast, appearing in flashbacks as Laura, and becoming a recurring character—Maddy, Laura's cousin who also becomes another victim of BOB.