David Lynch

David Keith Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 15, 2025) was an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician, and actor. Considered one of the most important filmmakers of his era, Lynch was often called a "visionary" and was acclaimed for films often distinguished by their surrealist qualities. In a career spanning more than 50 years, he received numerous accolades, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and an Honorary Academy Award in 2019. The adjective Lynchian came into use to describe works or situations reminiscent of his art, with the Oxford English Dictionary noting his penchant for "juxtaposing surreal or sinister elements with mundane, everyday environments, and for using compelling visual images to emphasize a dreamlike quality of mystery or menace".

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. Lynch was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for the biographical drama The Elephant Man (1980), the thriller Blue Velvet (1986), and the neo-noir 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 neo-noir Lost Highway (1997), the biographical drama The Straight Story (1999), and the thriller Inland Empire (2006).

Lynch and Mark Frost created the ABC series Twin Peaks (1990–91), for which he received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, 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. His acting roles included FBI agent Gordon Cole in Twin Peaks, Howard in the drama film Lucky (2017), and John Ford in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2022). He also guest-starred in TV series such as The Cleveland Show (2010–13) and Louie (2012).

Alongside his film and TV work, Lynch also worked as a musician, releasing solo albums and variety of collaborations; a visual artist, including painting, furniture design, and photography; and a nonfiction author, publishing the books Images (1994), Catching the Big Fish (2006), and Room to Dream (2018). He directed 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, he founded the David Lynch Foundation to fund meditation lessons for students, veterans, and other "at-risk" populations. A lifelong smoker, he was diagnosed with emphysema in 2020, and died in January 2025 after being evacuated from his home due to the Southern California wildfires.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lynch