David Lynch

Is mentioned in German author Patrick Roth's short story "Lynch for Lunch" (2008).

Announced at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival that he has been shooting a feature length project on digital video called Inland Empire (2006) for over a year. He also announced that he was so impressed with digital that he was giving up directing projects on film.

Lodz, Poland. Discussing his plans for building post production film studio in an old factory on Targowa street. [May 2004]

Currently (2002) runs his own personally authorized Web site, www.davidlynch.com and has been rumored to appear in the chat area of the site under a more than obvious name.

Has said that he is an admirer of Ronald Reagan, and supported the Natural Law Party in the 2000 Presidential Election. In both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections, he supported Barack Obama.

He is also an artist working in paint and such dynamic elements as live ants and rotting flesh. He also frequently designs and builds the furniture in his films. These can be seen in the documentary about him, Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch (1997).

He subsequently won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival with the dark, violent road movie Wild at Heart (1990), and achieved a huge cult following with his surreal TV series Twin Peaks (1990), which he adapted for the big screen, though his comedy series On the Air (1992) was less successful. He also draws comic strips and has devised multimedia stage events with regular composer Angelo Badalamenti.

He was introduced to Isabella Rossellini at a restaurant by a mutual friend when he was in the process of casting Blue Velvet (1986). Struck by her serene European beauty, he told her, "You could be Ingrid Bergman's daughter." 'You idiot,' my friend said to me," Lynch recalled, "'she is Ingrid Bergman's daughter!'"

Its enormous critical and commercial success led to Dune (1984), a hugely expensive commercial disaster, but Lynch redeemed himself with the now classic Blue Velvet (1986), his most personal and original work since his debut.

He was offered the chance to direct Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), but he turned it down, saying that the script was funny, but it wasn't his thing.

The final film was initially judged to be almost unreleasable weird, but thanks to the efforts of distributor Ben Barenholtz, it secured a cult following and enabled Lynch to make his first mainstream film (in an unlikely alliance with Mel Brooks), though The Elephant Man (1980) was shot through with his unique sensibility.

Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future director Jennifer Lynch shortly after he turned 21. That experience, plus attending art school in a particularly violent and run-down area of Philadelphia, inspired Eraserhead (1977), a film that he began in the early 1970s (after a couple of shorts) and which he would work on obsessively for five years.

Has practiced Transcendental Meditation for at least 20 minutes each day since 1973. Now very actively leads his own worldwide organization, the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, that is the midst of a campaign to raise $7 billion to further its goals. As a result, Lynch has not made a film since 2006's Inland Empire (2006).

Daughter, Director Jennifer Lynch (b. 1968), with first wife actress Peggy Lynch. Son, Austin Jack Lynch (b. 1982), with second wife Mary Fisk. Son, Riley Lynch (b. 1992), with film editor Mary Sweeney (she later became his third wife).

Some of his favorite films of all time are: 8½ (1963), La Strada (1954), Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Apartment (1960), Lolita (1962), Persona (1966), Hour of the Wolf (1968), Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Stroszek (1977) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Served as an usher at the Presidential Inauguration of John F. Kennedy (20 January 1961).

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985," pp. 621-626 (as David K. Lynch). New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Claims one of his favorite films to be The Wizard of Oz (1939), and has many references to the classic in his films, the most obvious are in Wild at Heart (1990). He has also cited Vertigo (1958) and Glen or Glenda (1953) as his other favorites.