Biography
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 Stra…
Directed
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Mulholland Drive (2001) — Director
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The Elephant Man (1980) — Director
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Blue Velvet (1986) — Director
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Dune (1984) — Director
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Lost Highway (1997) — Director
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Eraserhead (1977) — Director
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Twin Peaks (1990) — Director
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Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) — Director
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Wild at Heart (1990) — Director
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The Straight Story (1999) — Director
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Inland Empire (2006) — Director
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Twin Peaks (1989) — Director
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WHAT DID JACK DO? (2017) — Director
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Rabbits (2002) — Director
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Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (2014) — Director
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The Alphabet (1969) — Director
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Six Men Getting Sick (1967) — Director
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The Grandmother (1970) — Director
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To Each His Own Cinema (2007) — Director
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The Amputee (1974) — Director
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Darkened Room (2002) — Director
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The Cowboy and the Frenchman (1988) — Director
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Lumière & Company (1995) — Director
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Absurd Encounter with Fear (1967) — Director
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DumbLand (2001) — Director
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Boat (2003) — Director
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Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Brokenhearted (1990) — Director
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Hotel Room (1993) — Director
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Michael Jackson: Dangerous - The Short Films (1993) — Director
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Duran Duran: Unstaged (2014) — Director
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Sailing with Bushnell Keeler (1967) — Director
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Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (1995) — Director
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More Things That Happened (2007) — Director
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Eraserhead Stories (2001) — Director
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Ant Head (2018) — Director
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Idem Paris (2013) — Director
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Bug Crawls (2004) — Director
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Ballerina (2007) — Director
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Head with Hammer (2001) — Director
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The French as Seen by… (1988) — Director
Also appeared in
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Family Guy (1999) — Gus (voice)
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The Elephant Man (1980) — Man in the Bowler Hat in the Mob Chasing Merrick (uncredited)
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Dune (1984) — Spice Miner (uncredited)
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The Fabelmans (2022) — John Ford
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Twin Peaks (1990) — Gordon Cole
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Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) — Gordon Cole
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Inland Empire (2006) — Bucky J, the gaffer (voice)
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Lucky (2017) — Howard
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Louie (2010) — Jack Dall
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Robot Chicken (2005) — Mad Scientist (voice)
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WHAT DID JACK DO? (2017) — Detective
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The Cleveland Show (2009)
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Side by Side (2012) — Self
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Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (2014) — Gordon Cole
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David Lynch: The Art Life (2017) — Self
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Girlfriend's Day (2017) — Narrator (voice)
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The Amputee (1974) — The Nurse
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The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992) — Self
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Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream (2006) — Self
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Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019) — Self
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The Oscars (1953) — Self
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Lumière & Company (1995) — Self
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DumbLand (2001) — Randy / Wife / Sparky (voice)
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My Beautiful Broken Brain (2014) — Self
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Nadja (1995) — Morgue Receptionist
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Rammstein in Amerika (2015) — Self
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Beatles '64 (2024) — Self
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Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction (2013) — Self
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Boat (2003) — The Man
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Lynch/Oz (2023) — Self (archival footage)
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Sailing with Bushnell Keeler (1967)
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Eraserhead Stories (2001) — Self
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Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch (1997) — Self
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What Is Cinema? (2013) — Self
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Brand: A Second Coming (2015) — Self
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This Is Pop (2021) — Self (archive footage)
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The Nineties (2017) — Self (archive footage)
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Heart Beat (1980) — Painter (uncredited)
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Why Are We Creative? (2018) — Self
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Lynch (one) (2007) — Self