David Lynch

Country

GenderMale

BirthdayJan. 20, 1946

BiographyDavid Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician and actor. He has received critical acclaim for his films, which are often distinguished by their surrealist, dreamlike qualities. Lynch has received 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 film-maker 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). He directed the romantic crime drama Wild at Heart (1990), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He is also known for directing 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 the limited series Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). As an actor, he portrayed Gordon Cole in the Twin Peaks projects, had a guest role as the head of CBS in the FX series Louie (2012), and portrayed John Ford in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2022).

Lynch's other artistic endeavors include 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.

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