Twin Peaks' Audrey Horne turned her back on endless Audrey copies
A cherry stem tied in her mouth made Sherilyn Fenn a cult figure on Twin Peaks. Offered a spin-off and a stream of copycat parts, she refused them, skipped the prequel film to shoot Of Mice and Men, and began writing a no-nudity clause into her contracts after years of B-movies she was embarrassed by.
Born Sheryl Ann Fenn in Detroit on February 1, 1965, she came from a musical family. Her mother, Arlene Quatro, played keyboards, her aunt is the singer Suzi Quatro, and her father, Leo Fenn, managed rock acts that included Alice Cooper. The family moved often, and when they finally settled in Los Angeles she was 17. Rather than face yet another new school, she left after her junior year and signed up at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute.
Early work was mostly low-budget: a skateboarding film called Thrashin', the horror movie Zombie High and a string of what she later called sexploitation pictures, where directors pressed for nudity after contracts were signed. She admits she skipped classes and did not take acting seriously at first, and credits an agent who kept pushing her. Her first lead, Zalman King's Two Moon Junction, embarrassed her so much that she withdrew for a year. Around the same period she dated Johnny Depp for three and a half years, and the two became engaged.
David Lynch and Mark Frost cast her as Audrey Horne, the reckless schoolgirl with a hopeless crush on Agent Dale Cooper, in Twin Peaks, which aired from 1990 to 1991. Her fifties wardrobe, a dance to Angelo Badalamenti's music and the cherry-stem trick made Audrey a fan favourite and brought Fenn Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Lynch also gave her a small role in Wild at Heart, which took the top prize at Cannes in 1990, directing her to think only of bobby pins, lipstick, wallet and comb.
Disillusioned at 25, she found new confidence with the acting coach Roy London, who cast her in his directing debut, Diary of a Hitman. She then moved toward independent films. Gary Sinise, who cast her as a lonely ranch wife in Of Mice and Men, said she was one reason the film was cheered at Cannes. In Ruby she played a stripper built from several real women, among them Candy Barr. She returned as Audrey when Twin Peaks came back in 2017.
Source: Sherilyn Fenn
