David Keith Lynch was an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician, and actor. He received acclaim for his films, which are often distinguished by their surrealist, dreamlike qualities. In a career spanning more than fifty years, he was awarded numerous accolades, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and an Honorary Academy Award in 2019. Described as a "visionary", Lynch was considered one of the most important filmmakers of his era.
Lynch studied painting before he began making short films in the late 1960s. His first feature-length film was the independent surrealist film Eraserhead (1977), which saw success as a midnight movie. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for the biographical drama The Elephant Man (1980), the neo-noir thriller Blue Velvet (1986), and the surrealist mystery Mulholland Drive (2001). His romantic crime drama Wild at Heart (1990) won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He also directed the space opera adaptation Dune (1984), the surrealist neo-noir Lost Highway (1997), the biographical drama The Straight Story (1999), and the experimental film Inland Empire (2006).
Lynch and Mark Frost created the ABC series Twin Peaks (1990–91), for which he was nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Lynch co-wrote and directed its film prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), and a third season in 2017. He also portrayed FBI agent Gordon Cole in Twin Peaks and John Ford in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2022), and guest-starred in shows such as The Cleveland Show (2010–13) and Louie (2012).
Lynch also worked as a musician, recording the albums BlueBOB (2001), Crazy Clown Time (2011), and The Big Dream (2013), as well as painting and photography. He wrote the books Images (1994), Catching the Big Fish (2006), and Room to Dream (2018). He directed several music videos, for artists such as X Japan, Moby, Interpol, Nine Inch Nails, and Donovan, and commercials for Dior, YSL, Gucci, and the NYC Department of Sanitation. A practitioner of Transcendental Meditation (TM), he founded the David Lynch Foundation to fund meditation lessons for students, veterans, and other "at-risk" populations. Lynch died on January 15, 2025, after being evacuated from his home due to the wildfires that started in Southern California earlier that month.