Ray Wise has two qualities that get him into this issue of Actors We Love: He's always great, and you know who he is, even if you don't recall his name. A recent issue of TV Guide enumerated the Top Cult TV Shows. One was Twin Peaks. To describe Peaks as simply a "cult phenomenon," however, isn't entirely accurate. While the series currently has a devoted following, it was a huge success in its time and is a seminal influence on TV. What the question "Who Killed J.R?" was to the 1980s, "Who Killed Laura Palmer" was to '90s television. The answer of course was her demon-possessed father, Leland Palmer. Portraying him was Ray Wise. Remember him now?
Wise has worked in film and television for more than 30 years, but he's not unfamiliar with theatre; he won an Obie for his performance as "Hoss" in The Tooth of Crime. He's been a staple in myriad soap operas, and he works in TV to this day, with appearances on shows as varied as Sports Night, Dawson's Creek, and Judging Amy. He began his film career in Swamp Thing, then went on to play a Depression-era father in The Journey of Natty Gann and a thug in Robocop. In recent years he's been featured in the Project Greenlight film The Battle of Shaker Heights and as a vengeful farmer in Jeepers Creepers 2. Wise was terrific in all these roles. But it's his performance as Leland Palmer that sticks with me years later, that haunts me.
Peaks begins with the discovery of teenager Laura Palmer's body floating in a river. Her lawyer father, Leland, go-to guy for nefarious local business interests, is shattered. Wise is a study in grief here, and a scene in which he has a breakdown at a hotel dance is acting at its most uncomfortably real. During the whole first season, Leland is a hollow, staggering shell of a man, but in Season Two he's a changed fellow. His hair turned entirely white overnight, Leland has regained his composure. Wise inverts his previous performance with an eerie conviviality, a song-and-dance man with something dark behind the eyes. But all of this is simply a setup for shocking revelations to come. The scene in which Leland murders his niece is perhaps the most brutal in TV history, the man's mock Father Knows Best rectitude replaced by sheer savagery. Leland's subsequent confession and suicide are a tour de force for Wise, who alternates from moment to moment between seeming to channel evil and experiencing heartbreaking loss.
Wise's reprisal of the character in the underrated film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me deepens his achievement, the whole of it a harrowing pas de deux between him and Sheryl Lee. Watching Peaks again recently, I was amazed that when the series first ran, no one guessed that Leland was the killer; watching it now, it seems extravagantly obvious. It occurs to me that Wise was so good at playing Leland—so tortured, creepily funny, horrifying—that viewers forgot they were playing detective and were simply dazzled by a bravura performance. That's a notable achievement, and the luster of it shines in Wise's acting to this day.