10 Actor Replacements That Actually Improved Movies

Donna Hayward was a significant character in David Lynch's series Twin Peaks, though also one of its more divisive major players, in part because Lara Flynn Boyle's performance as Laura Palmer's (Sheryl Lee) troubled best friend split audiences right down the middle.

When Boyle couldn't return for the 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me due to scheduling conflicts, she was replaced with Moira Kelly, who many fans maintain gave a far more vibrant and persuasive performance in a single film than Boyle did across 30 episodes of the show.

Granted, the two actresses are in many respects playing two starkly different versions of the same person on separate sides of a traumatic, life-changing event, but even so, Kelly's portrayal feels more well thought-out, while Boyle's is more skittish and ultimately irritating.

Kelly had the advantage of only performing the part for a comparatively short time, while most fans agree that Donna's characterisation veers off a cliff in the show's second season and Boyle's performance with it.

Even so, Kelly's work in Fire Walk with Me left a lot of fans wishing that she'd simply been cast in the part from the beginning and even been invited back for Lynch's recent third season (in which neither actress appeared).