David Lynch

American director and screenwriter, one of the most talented and imaginative contemporary filmmakers of the 20th century. His work includes the movies Eraserhead (1977), The Elephant Man (1980), Dune (1984) Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001), and the television series Twin Peaks (1990-1991).

A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Best Foreign Film twice, as well as the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival.

The son of a research scientist for the Department of Agriculture, he moved often around the Northwest while growing up, being raised in Washington, Idaho, and finally Virginia where he went to high school. Aiming to become a painter, he trained at various art schools. Entering the job market, he found a train of jobs that did not satisfy him, and had married and had a child before deciding to go back to school. He lived in a ghetto and crime infested location in order to put his funds into schooling, until he was given a good fiscal commission for an avant-garde art piece.

His first film, as odd and weird as all his work, about an abused, bed-wetting boy who grew a kindly grandmother from a seed, won several awards and helped Lynch win a fellowship in the AFI's Center for Advanced Film Studies in Beverly Hills in 1970.

He began filming Eraserhead in 1972, filming at night as he eked a bare living from delivering newspapers. It was a slow, strained period as his funding dried up and his marriage folded. The film was not completed until 1976 and distributed the following year. The film was a surrealistic nightmare that never gained popularity outside of it's cult status.

The Elephant Man (1980), won critical acclaim and was nominated for eight Oscars. It was followed by a failure, Dune, in 1984.