Also known as: 데이빗 린치, デイヴィッド・リンチ, David Keith Lynch, DKL
Born in Missoula, Montana, USA
1946-01-20 (age 78 at death)
Died 2025-01-16
David Keith Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 16, 2025) was an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician, and actor. Lynch received critical acclaim for his films, which are often distinguished by their surrealist, dreamlike qualities. In his 58-year career, he was awarded numerous accolades, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2006 and an Honorary Academy Award in 2019. In 2007, a panel of critics convened by The Guardian announced that "after all the discussion, no one could fault the conclusion that David Lynch is the most important filmmaker of the current 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) and the mystery films Blue Velvet (1986) and 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 Lynch was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards for 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 its limited series revival (2017). He has also worked as an actor, including his portrayals of FBI agent Gordon Cole in Twin Peaks and director John Ford in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2022), as well as guest roles in TV series such as The Cleveland Show (2010–13), Louie (2012), and Robot Chicken (2020, 2022).
Lynch's other artistic endeavours included his work as a musician, encompassing the studio albums BlueBOB (2001), Crazy Clown Time (2011), and The Big Dream (2013), as well as painting and photography. He has written the books Images (1994), Catching the Big Fish (2006), and Room to Dream (2018). He has directed several music videos for artists such as Chris Isaak, X Japan, Moby, Interpol, Nine Inch Nails, and Donovan, and commercials for Calvin Klein, Dior, L'Oreal, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, and the New York City Department of Sanitation. A practitioner of Transcendental Meditation (TM), he founded the David Lynch Foundation, which seeks to fund the teaching of TM in schools and has since widened its scope to other at-risk populations, including the homeless, veterans, and refugees.
From Wikipedia
David Keith Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 16, 2025) was an American filmmaker, actor, painter, and musician. 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 a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival, an Academy Honorary Award, and a (posthumous) Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement, in addition to nominations for four Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and nine Primetime Emmy Awards.
Initially aspiring to become a painter, Lynch began creating short films out of a desire to effect movement in his paintings. He made his feature film debut with the surrealist body horror film Eraserhead (1977), which took him five years to make due to financial issues and slowly found success as a midnight movie. He garnered critical acclaim for the biographical drama film The Elephant Man (1980) and the neo-noir mystery films Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001), all three of which earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director. His romantic crime drama film Wild at Heart (1990) won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He also directed the neo-noir horror film Lost Highway (1997), the comedy-drama film The Straight Story (1999), and the experimental psychological horror film Inland Empire (2006), his last feature film. He wrote and directed the space opera film Dune (1984) but disowned it after extensive studio interference.
Lynch co-created (with Mark Frost) and directed the ABC surrealist horror-mystery series Twin Peaks (1990–1991; 2017), for which he received nine Primetime Emmy Award nominations. The series is considered a landmark turning point in television and often listed among the greatest television series of all time. He also co-wrote (with Robert Engels) and directed its film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). He directed music videos for Donovan, Interpol, Chris Isaak, X Japan, Moby, and Nine Inch Nails, and commercials for Dior, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, the PlayStation 2, and the New York City Department of Sanitation. His acting roles included Gordon Cole on Twin Peaks, the voice of Gus on the animated sitcom The Cleveland Show (2010–2013), Jack Dahl on the sitcom Louie (2012), Howard in the drama film Lucky (2017), and film director John Ford in Steven Spielberg's drama film The Fabelmans (2022).
Lynch also worked as an animator, author, cartoonist, furniture designer, musician, photographer, and sculptor. A longtime practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, he founded the David Lynch Foundation to fund meditation lessons for at-risk populations. He was a lifelong chain smoker and his emphysema was exacerbated when he was evacuated from his home in Los Angeles due to the January 2025 Southern California wildfires. He died at his daughter Jennifer's home soon thereafter.