Actor Died After Doughnut Shop Fight

Authorities said Friday that actor Jack Nance, star of the 1978 cult film “Eraserhead,” was struck during a fight a day before he was discovered dead in his home.

The 53-year-old actor, whose full name was Marvin John Nance and who appeared in several David Lynch movies, was punched in the head during a fight with two men Sunday at a doughnut shop, said Deputy Mark Bailey of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Detectives said Nance had blunt-force head injuries.

“Sometimes people irritated Jack, so he’d be verbally abusive,” Lynch said Friday. Lynch said Nance was in poor physical shape. “Jack always said he wouldn’t be too hard to kill.”

Nance made his film debut in Lynch’s “Eraserhead,” playing a hapless misfit with towering hair and a girlfriend who gives birth to a halfhuman. Nance later appeared in other Lynch films, including “Dune” in 1984, “Blue Velvet” in 1986 and “Wild at Heart” in 1990.

In “Twin Peaks,” Nance played Pete Martell, the lumber-mill foreman who discovers the body of a murdered homecoming queen.