JAMES DEAN ATE HERE, AND THEN HE DIED.
Lore has it that James Dean consumed his last meal at the Du-Par's coffee shop, in Los Angeles's Farmers' Market. A car wreck ensued shortly thereafter. True or not, Du-Par's does pie awfully well, and Lara Flynn Boyle has made it clear that she would like to eat some. She arrives in a new BMW, as well as in a wide-brimmed hat similar to the one she wore as Donna Hayward at Laura Palmer's funeral. She is, it seems, a hat girl. She is twenty, and her face is a serene study in freckled pointillism. She laughs easily, a laugh not unlike the barf of a seal, which isn't as bad as you'd imagine. (We like it, in fact.) She looks comfortable in a coffee-shop booth, as though she had dimpled the vinyl cushions of many. "I'm Midwestern," she says, and in saying this, she has said enough.

SHE HATES CHERRY PIE.
"I hate cherry pie," says Lara Flynn, sweetly, but getting her point across. "I'm gonna have a piece of rhubarb pie." She would prefer strawberry rhubarb, always plentiful and sublime back in Chicago, her hometown, but Du-Par's cannot deliver the goods. We also request wedges of lemon meringue and cherry, despite her remonstrations about the latter. "Really hate it," she says.

DONNA WEEPS BECAUSE SHE NEEDS SEX.
Some basic differences between Donna and the actress who portrays her: The actress smokes heavily and is game and playful; the character has no questionable habits (besides crying frequently) and is somber and conflicted. Donna Hayward was Laura Palmer's best friend, and now she is in love with Laura's secret biker boyfriend, James Hurley. "Donna was a little sad, dull, boring, lifeless and comatose," says Lara Flynn. "But there's a lot of fire underneath. She's one of those girls who took her teenage years a little bit too seriously. Everything Donna does is very urgent. It's life or death. Like Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass." She feels better about Donna's condition this season. "Something fun is happening," she says, teasing. "Something's going on."

SHE LOST HER VIRGINITY AND NEVER KNEW IT.
Lara Flynn says Donna is pure and chaste, albeit frustrated and horny. The men who created her think otherwise. "We don't even know for sure yet," says Lynch, meaning she probably isn't unspoiled, as it were. "Donna's sort of a mysterious one." Says coexecutive producer Mark Frost, "I don't think anybody's all good. My guess is she's not a virgin."

We later inform Lara Flynn of this. "Really?" she says, stunned.

SHE IS SLEEPING WITH SPECIAL AGENT COOPER.
To date, Donna and preternaturally awestruck pie enthusiast Dale Cooper of the FBI have appeared in only one Twin Peaks scene together. And yet in what passes for real life, they cohabit, they share lodging, they are intimate. That is, actors Kyle MacLachlan and Lara Flynn Boyle are conducting a celebrity romance. "Today's our anniversary," she says, like a girl in love. "A year and a half." She calls Cooper "the sexiest geek" and says MacLachlan does not diverge much from his alter ego. "He's just like Agent Cooper," she says. "He says, 'Look at those trees!' Or he'll really marvel over a good cup of coffee, you know?"

HER DREAMS ARE SWEET AND STICKY.
"It's like I'm having the most beautiful dream and the most terrible nightmare all at once," Donna once said. Lara Flynn, who had her share of nightmares after playing the victim in the TV movie The Preppie Murder, says this about her nocturnal life: "Do you remember the Marshmallow Fluff stuff? That spread? This will sound funny, but I've had this recurring dream since I was eight years old that I'm stuck in Fluff and can't get out. And there's black-and-white TV static all around me. It's frightening."

SHE TELLS HER SECRETS.
"I paint my dog's toenails," she says. "For the fun of it." She cannot tie a cherry stem with her tongue, but she will let her dog eat food that is inside her mouth. She is dyslexic and acutely shy, a combination that prevents her from going into grocery stores or restaurants alone. She has been known to perform Academy Award acceptance speeches in front of the bathroom mirror, clutching a toothbrush. "Really gross, huh?" she says. She was named for the Julie Christie character in Dr. Zhivago and is the unfortunate owner of many music boxes that play "Lara's Theme." She drives atrociously and can wiggle her ears upon request.

MYSTERIES OF DAVID LYNCH, DIRECTOR, PART TWO.
"He once came over to me and said, 'I want you to purr like a pussycat in this scene,' " she says. "He wanted me to do the whole thing purring." Another time, she says, "he came up to me before my close-up and said, 'Imagine yourself as a fawn in the forest' ".

ON PIE REVIEWS AND MOTIVES FOR MURDER.
"The lemon meringue is the best," she says. "The rhubarb is a little too bitter, although I have a stuffy nose and couldn't really taste it that well. And I'm not even touching the cherry." As for whether she killed Laura Palmer: "I don't know," she says, which is a big shock. "But did you ever have a best friend in school who was always just a little more popular than you? And you were in their shadow? And you couldn't stand any more of it? I think maybe Donna had that."

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