David Lynch
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David Keith Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 16, 2025) was an American filmmaker, painter, visual artist, film editor, musician, and actor. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, with his films often characterized by a distinctive surrealist sensibility that gave rise to the adjective "Lynchian". In a career spanning more than five decades, he received numerous accolades, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2006, an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, and Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement posthumously in 2025. Lynch studied painting and made short films before making his first feature, the independent body horror film Eraserhead (1977), which found success as a midnight movie. He earned critical acclaim and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director for the biographical drama The Elephant Man (1980) and the neo-noir mystery films Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001). For his romantic crime drama Wild at Heart (1990), he received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He also directed the space opera Dune (1984), the neo-noir horror Lost Highway (1997), the road movie The Straight Story (1999), and the experimental psychological horror film Inland Empire (2006). Lynch and Mark Frost created the ABC surrealist horror-mystery series Twin Peaks (1990–1991; 2017), for which he received nine Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Lynch co-wrote and directed its film prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). His acting career included roles on Twin Peaks, The Cleveland Show (2010–2013), and Louie (2012), and in the films Lucky (2017) and The Fabelmans (2022). He directed music videos for Chris Isaak, X Japan, Moby, Interpol, Nine Inch Nails, and Donovan, and commercials for Dior, YSL, Gucci, PlayStation 2, and the New York City Department of Sanitation. Lynch also worked as a musician, releasing solo and collaborative albums, and as a furniture designer, cartoonist, animator, photographer, sculptor, and author. A practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, he founded the David Lynch Foundation to fund meditation lessons for at-risk populations. A lifelong smoker, he died from complications of emphysema after being evacuated from his home due to the January 2025 Southern California wildfires.