Actress

Born: October 22, 1943;

Died: September 28, 2015

Catherine Coulson, who has died of cancer aged 71, was a classical stage actress who spent 22 seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but she was best known for a small supporting role in a television series quarter of a century ago, playing an eccentric woman who carries a log around and talks nonsense.

David Lynch's Twin Peaks (1990-91) did not always make complete sense, but FBI agent Kyle MacLachlan's investigations into the mysterious murder of a teenager in a small town in Washington State captivated a sizeable audience both in the United States and United Kingdom.

The town was populated by the weirdest bunch of characters ever to wander onto primetime and none was stranger than Coulson's "Log Lady", the widow of a lumberjack, who had died in a fire on their wedding night, long before the events of the series began.

She wanders around cradling a log in her arms, like a baby, insisting that her log saw what had happened and one day would reveal the truth. It never did, even though Coulson, and the log, appeared in 12 episodes and in the 1992 feature film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

Catherine Elizabeth Coulson was born in Elmhusrt, Illinois, in 1943, but grew up in California. Her mother was a ballet dancer and her father was a radio and television producer. She trained as an actress, met David Lynch in the early 1970s at the American Film Institute, where she was teaching and he was a student. She appeared in his 1974 short The Amputee.

At the time she was married to Jack Nance, who Lynch cast as the protagonist in his debut feature Eraserhead, which was shot in black and white over several years on a miniscule budget. Coulson worked as assistant director on it. It finally came out in 1977 and laid the foundations of Lynch's reputation as a challenging and exciting new talent.

Coulson and Lynch maintained their association, leading to her memorable role in Twin Peaks, though Lynch had conceived of the Log Lady before he thought of Twin Peaks, inspired by a vision of Coulson with her glasses on and by the idea of "branches of knowledge". Nance played the lumberjack Pete Martell, though by that time they had divorced.

But Coulson's first love was theatre. She worked with several companies, but most notably the Oregon Shakespeare Festival company in Ashland, Oregon, where she lived. Despite the name, the company operates for ten months of the year and presents many modern plays too. She appeared in more than 50 productions.

"A surprising number of Shakespeare fans have also seen every episode of Twin Peaks," she said. "I wonder what the appeal is? Probably complicated plot lines – that's something Shakespeare has in common with David Lynch. And cross-dressing."

She was due to return in a new series of Twin Peaks, due for broadcast next year. She is survived by her second husband Marc Sirinsky, who is a rabbi, and their daughter Zoey.

BRIAN PENDREIGH