Born in Missoula, Montana in 1946, Lynch moved around a lot as a child, living in five different states in his formative years (including an inspirational stretch in Washington State). As a Boy Scout he was present at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in January 1961, on Lynch's 15th birthday. Early plans to be a painter fell through after a dispiriting trip to Europe, so he pivoted to film to support his young family.
His first short film was Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (1967), an "arty" but somewhat baffling short piece, setting the tone for his career. Several promising short films followed, and then his first full release, Eraserhead (1977). Lynch spent five years making the movie, remounting it every time he raised enough money to shoot a bit more material. The film proved polarising on the festival circuit, but it picked up a cult following after a wider release in 1977. Stanley Kubrick and Mel Brooks both highly rated it.
Such plaudits saw Lynch taken more seriously and producer Stuart Cornfeld agreed to help him fund his next project. After considering several scripts doing the rounds, Lynch chose The Elephant Man purely based on the title. The film, starring John Hurt as the deformed Joseph Merrick, was rapturously received and earned Lynch his first Academy Award nomination. George Lucas was a huge fan and offered Lynch the chance to direct the third Star Wars film, an idea Lynch found baffling and declined.
Perhaps appropriately, Lynch instead decided to join forces with novelist Frank Herbert on an adaptation of his 1965 novel Dune. Herbert had been furious when viewing Star Wars in 1977, finding many points of similarity between his novel and Lucas' film. Herbert considered legal action, but was advised to instead leverage the resulting sci-fi craze to get Dune on the screen instead. Despite production difficulties, Lynch enjoyed making the film and working with Herbert, and also considered the cast most impressive: a young actor he discovered, Kyle MacLachlan, became a frequent collaborator. However, Lynch fell out with the producers over the film's final cut (which bombed at the box office in 1984), and a later attempt to re-edit the film into a TV mini-series without his permission angered him.
Lynch returned to more of his traditional output with the intense, surreal and disturbing Blue Velvet (1986), also starring MacLachlan. The film was praised by Woody Allen and saw Lynch regain some of the kudos he'd lost with Dune.
Lynch then surprised many by deciding to move into television, helped by ex-Hill Street Blues producer Mark Frost. After developing a Marilyn Monroe biopic series, they hit on the idea of a murder mystery in the American north-west under the working title "Northwest Passage." ABC bought the project and it hit the screens in 1990 as Twin Peaks. Again starring MacLachlan, the show saw the FBI brought into investigate a puzzling murder in Twin Peaks, Washington. The mystery gripped not just the USA, but every country it was broadcast in, and "Who killed Laura Palmer?" because the single-most-asked question of 1990. The first, eight-episode season was acclaimed, as was its haunting soundtrack, but ABC wanted a full 22-episode second season, which stretched viewer interest past the breaking point. Aware they were losing the audience, ABC insisted on the killer being revealed early, to Lynch's immense frustration. Aware the show would not be returning, he ended the second season on a brutal cliffhanger that raised a whole load of new questions. Lynch returned to the series with a bizarre prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), that answered few questions and alienated many fans of the show.
Lynch returned to film, directing Wild at Heart (1990), Lost Highway (1997) and The Straight Story (1999); the latter shocked audiences for being a relatively straightforward story with no sex or violence, though it did retain some of Lynch's surreal imagery.
Lynch again decided to work in television, developing a new project for ABC about a young woman who arrives in Los Angeles and gets mixed up with some strange local characters and another woman with amnesia. The pilot was half-finished when ABC decided to shelve it, but Lynch worked out a deal to turn it into a feature film. Mulholland Drive (2001) was a surprise hit when it launched, attracting wild critical praise and moderate commercial success. The film was praised for launching the career of Naomi Watts and enhancing the career of up-and-comer Justin Theroux. The film has several times topped polls to find the best film of the 21st Century (so far).
Lynch continued to work in film, releasing Inland Empire (2006), but admitted he had become pickier about projects. He collaborated with Werner Herzog on the latter's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (2009) and with the band Nine Inch Nails on a 2013 music video ("Came Back Haunted"). To the surprise of some, he decided his next project would be a reprise of Twin Peaks, by producing, co-writing and directing 18 new episodes for Showtime. The third season of Twin Peaks aired in 2017 and received significant critical praise.
In 2022 Lynch did finally return to film, but in an acting role. He portrayed director John Ford in Steven Spielberg's autobiographical film The Fabelmans. New projects were definitively ruled out by his diagnosis with emphysema in 2024, which he blamed on his lifelong smoking habit.
David Lynch was very much one of a kind. An intense artist, he had a bemusing sense of humour and little interest in playing by other people's rules. His films are mostly unified by their strangeness, a mirror to the weirdness of life (both the everyday and the extraordinary). Although Dune is his only overtly science-fictional work, and Twin Peaks dabbles in fantasy, a lot of Lynch's other work taps into his fascination with quantum mechanics. Mulholland Drive, perhaps his most popular and well-regarded film, spins on a dime between two different versions of Los Angeles, with the same actors playing suddenly very different characters. Lost Highway and Inland Empire both employ similar devices.
Lynch could direct more conventionally, with The Elephant Man, Dune, The Straight Story and elements of Twin Peaks hinting at a more commercially-aware side, and many a Hollywood producer probably regretted Lynch not adopting a more conventional approach. But that was never in Lynch's style. He is survived by four children, and will very much be missed.
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