She played a character whose name is one of the most iconic in TV history: Laura Palmer. Even people who couldn’t handle David Lynch’s unique brand of weirdness know that she was a character on a show called Twin Peaks, which is returning to TV in 2016, and that someone killed her. It should have been the first of many major roles for actress Sheryl Lee, projects where she wasn’t dead in the pilot episode, but things haven’t exactly worked out that way for her.
Lee, 47, says she is still struggling with her health and finances after developing rare blood disorder neutropenia, in 2007. It makes her more susceptible to bacterial infections.
She said: “I’ve had to sell everything for financial reasons. From the age of 40, I went through illness for four and a half years. I tried to keep working through it as much as I could, but I was physically not able to do it as much and if you look sick it’s hard to get a job. I did a few independent films, but there’s no money in them. So everything was taken away — my health, my career, my finances. I had a little house, and I sold that and moved into a condo, then sold the condo…I kept downsizing and downsizing.”
She even had to part with her Twin Peaks souvenirs: “I wish I still had them but I had to sell them too. I now live a very, very quiet, simple life in a tiny little guest house on somebody else’s ranch.” (Via)
In recent years, Lee had a recurring role on ABC’s little-loved Dirty Sexy Money and a small role in the Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone, but she says, “People always assume that, if you’re an actor who’s been on anything from which you’re recognizable, that you’re making all this money, and it’s just not true.” She hasn’t been contacted about starring in the new Twin Peaks.
