David Keith Lynch was born on January 20, 1946. He was reared in Missoula, Montana, by a middle-class family.¹⁾

Lynch spent his youth traveling throughout the United States before studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he initially began creating short films.²⁾

He relocated to Los Angeles, where he created his debut feature film, Eraserhead, a surrealist horror thriller (1977).³⁾

After Eraserhead became a cult classic on the midnight cinema circuit, Lynch was hired to create The Elephant Man (1980), a biographical picture about a deformed man named Joseph Merrick, from which he garnered mainstream recognition.⁴⁾

He was then hired by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group and went on to make two films: the science-fiction epic Dune (1984), which was a critical and economic disaster, and Blue Velvet (1986), a neo-noir crime drama that was highly lauded.⁵⁾

In the same decade, Lynch developed his own television series, the popular murder mystery Twin Peaks (1990–1991; 2017), with Mark Frost: he also made a cinematic prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992); a road movie, Wild at Heart (1990); and a family picture, The Straight Story (1999).⁶⁾

His foray into surrealism filmmaking began with three films that used “dream logic” and non-linear narrative structures: the psychological thriller Lost Highway (1997), the neo-noir mystery film Mulholland Drive (2001), and the mystery film Inland Empire (2006).⁷⁾

Simultaneously, Lynch embraced the Internet as a medium, creating a number of web-based projects such as the animated DumbLand (2002) and the weird sitcom Rabbits (2002).⁸⁾

Lynch possesses a variety of skills. He has worked as a singer-songwriter, releasing two solo albums, Crazy Clown Time (2011) and The Big Dream (2013).⁹⁾

Lynch worked with his fellow Virginia Eagle Scouts on his 15th birthday, placing VIPs in the bleachers outside the White House during John F. Kennedy's inauguration.¹⁰⁾

The David Lynch Foundation, which he established to finance Transcendental Meditation education in schools.¹¹⁾