David Lynch
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.
71 directing credits · 150 acting credits
Directing · 71
Twin Peaks
1990
Mulholland Drive
2001
Dune
1984
Lost Highway
1997
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
1992
Blue Velvet
1986
Eraserhead
1977
Wild at Heart
1990
The Elephant Man
1980
Inland Empire
2006
On the Air
1992
To Each His Own Cinema
2007
Hotel Room
1993
The Straight Story
1999
Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
2014
Twin Peaks
1989
DumbLand
2001
WHAT DID JACK DO?
2017
Lumière & Company
1995
Michael Jackson: Dangerous - The Short Films
1993
Rabbits
2002
The Alphabet
1969
Rabbits
2002
42 One Dream Rush
2010
The King of Ads
1991
Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Brokenhearted
1990
More Things That Happened
2007
The Cowboy and the Frenchman
1988
One Morning All Over the World
2000
The French as Seen by…
1988
Blue Velvet: The Lost Footage
2011
The Amputee
1974
Boat
2003
Dynamic:01: The Best of DavidLynch.com
2007
Duran Duran: Unstaged
2014
Out Yonder — Chicken
2007
The Short Films of David Lynch
2002
Premonitions Following an Evil Deed
1995
20 Little Films
2012
Darkened Room
2002
Six Men Getting Sick
1967
Absurd Encounter with Fear
1967
Sailing with Bushnell Keeler
1967
The Grandmother
1970
Eraserhead Stories
2001
Fire (Pożar)
2015
Twin Peaks Festival Greeting 2008
2008
Steps
2002
Intervalometer Experiments
2004
Early Experiments
2008
Pierre and Sonny Jim
2002
Out Yonder — Teeth
2003
Out Yonder — Neighbor Boy
2002
Ballerina
2007
Memory Film
2012
Interview Project
—
Sunset #1
2001
Bug Crawls
2004
Factory Mask
2001
Industrial Soundscape
2002
The Disc of Sorrow Is Installed
2002
Head with Hammer
2001
Lamp
2003
Idem Paris
2013
Waiting for Mr. Lynch
2018
The Pig Walks
2002
Ant Head
2018
Dead Mouse with Ants
2002
Coyote #1
2002
BlueBob Egg
2002
Hollyshorts Greeting
2008
Acting · 150
Family Guy
1999
Twin Peaks
1990
Robot Chicken
2005
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
1992
The Cleveland Show
2009
The Oscars
1953
Louie
2010
Dune
1984
Legends
2006
The Nineties
2017
This Is Pop
2021
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
1992
The Fabelmans
2022
Scene by Scene
1997
The Elephant Man
1980
Leçon de Cinéma
2004
Inland Empire
2006
Un film et son époque
2003
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound
2019
Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
2014
Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!
2026
DumbLand
2001
I Know Catherine, the Log Lady
2026
Side by Side
2012
Lucky
2017
Independent Focus
1998
Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night
1988
Plankton Salesmen
2017
WHAT DID JACK DO?
2017
Lumière & Company
1995
The Fine Art of Separating People from Their Money
1996
Beatles '64
2024
Critic
2008
Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch
1997
Made in the USA
1993
Destination Dune
1983
Girlfriend's Day
2017
The Black Ghiandola
2017
The Man with the Gray Elevated Hair
2017
Lynch/Oz
2023
Cinéma, de notre temps
1989
In Dreams: The Roy Orbison Story
1999
Jonathan Ross Presents for One Week Only: David Lynch
1990
David Lynch: The Art Life
2017
Why Are We Creative?
2018
Twin Peaks: The Phenomenon
2017
Hollywood Mavericks
1990
Nadja
1995
A Very Lovely Dream: One Week in Twin Peaks
2017
Love, Death, Elvis & Oz: The Making of Wild at Heart
2004
Dino De Laurentiis: The Last Movie Mogul
2001
Lynch (one)
2007
Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction
2013
La Traversée du désir
2009
A Bloody Finger in Your Mouth
2017
Crazy About the Movies: Dennis Hopper
1991
Rammstein in Amerika
2015
Heart Beat
1980
Heart of the Festival
2002
The 8th Floor
2014
Blue Velvet Revisited
2016
The Reality of Truth
2016
Morceaux de Cannes
2021
What Is Cinema?
2013
Night Flight: Born Again
2016
Mel Brooks: Make a Noise
2013
Welcome Home: Mary Reber and the Twin Peaks Palmer House
2021
Between Two Worlds
2014
Brand: A Second Coming
2015
The Number of Completion
2017
The Amputee
1974
Along for the Ride
2016
Meeting the Beatles in India
2020
Boat
2003
Great Directors
2009
Dynamic:01: The Best of DavidLynch.com
2007
David Lynch in Oslo
2010
The Sleeper Must Awaken: Making Dune
2021
Brunes et Blondes
2010
Lynch 2
2007
I Don't Know Jack
2002
Mysteries of Love
2002
Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream
2006
David Lynch: Insight
2017
The Music of David Lynch
2016
A Pot of Boiling Oil
2017
The Making of ‘Mulholland Drive’
2004
Out Yonder — Chicken
2007
Tell It Martin
2017
Ringo Starr: A Lifetime of Peace and Love
2014
The Making Of A Mockumentary
2025
A Fall from Grace
—
The Polish Accountant
2017
The A-Z of Separating People from their Money
1998
My Beautiful Broken Brain
2014
The Short Films of David Lynch
2002
Elvis | Viva Las Vegas
2008
I Had Bad Milk in Dehradun
2017
Dennis Hopper: The Decisive Moments
2004
Professor Goudet's Lessons
2013
See You on the Other Side Dear Friend
2017
Moby Doc
2021
2012: Time for Change
2010
No Frank in Lumberton
1988
Zelly & Me
1988
The Way of Samodelkin
2009
The Hanging of Stuart Cornfeld
2025
David Wants to Fly
2010
Don Van Vliet: Some YoYo Stuff
1994
Dennis Hopper: Create (or Die)
2003
Curtains Up
2018
Sailing with Bushnell Keeler
1967
A Slice of Lynch
2007
Red Fish
2009
On Meditation
2016
This Is Sparklehorse
2022
Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers
2017
Behind the Red Curtain
2017
Eraserhead Stories
2001
Twin Peaks Festival Greeting 2008
2008
David Lynch: The Idea Dictates Everything
2021
Two Blue Balls
2017
David Lynch: Don't Look at Me
1989
David Lynch: A Remembrance Both Wonderful and Strange
2025
Shadows of Paradise
2016
Rocksteppy
2017
Early Experiments
2008
The Sound of Lynch
2007
Return to Mulholland Drive
2003
Meditation, Creativity, Peace
2012
Out Yonder — Teeth
2003
Donovan: The Donovan Concert - Live in L.A.
2007
When Lynch Met Lucas
2010
The Original Image - David Lynch
2019
Out Yonder — Neighbor Boy
2002
Memory Film
2012
David Lynch: 1985
2005
Bad Binoculars
2017
It's a Beautiful World
2014
Does That Hurt You?
2003
David Lynch Teaches Creativity and Film
2019
The Disc of Sorrow Is Installed
2002
Lamp
2003
David Lynch: The Virtual Life
2020
The Soul Detective
2009
Ruth, Roses, and Revolver
1987
BlueBob Egg
2002
Hollyshorts Greeting
2008
Ångesthunden och Malmö under vatten
2011
What Would David Lynch Do?
2026