David Keith Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 15, 2025) was an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician, and actor. Often described as a visionary and acclaimed for films distinguished by their surrealist and experimental qualities, Lynch is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. In a career spanning more than five decades, he received numerous accolades, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and an Academy Honorary Award in 2019.

Lynch studied painting and made short films before making his first feature, the independent body horror film Eraserhead (1977), which found success as a midnight movie. He earned critical acclaim and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director for the biographical drama The Elephant Man (1980) and the neo-noir mystery art films Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001). For his romantic crime drama Wild at Heart (1990), he received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He also directed the space opera Dune (1984), the neo-noir horror Lost Highway (1997), the road movie The Straight Story (1999), and the experimental psychological thriller Inland Empire (2006).

Lynch and Mark Frost created the ABC surrealist horror-mystery series Twin Peaks (1990–1991), for which he received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Lynch co-wrote and directed its film prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) and a third season in 2017. His acting career included roles on Twin Peaks, The Cleveland Show (2010–2013), and Louie (2012), and in the films Lucky (2017) and The Fabelmans (2022). He directed music videos for Chris Isaak, X Japan, Moby, Interpol, Nine Inch Nails and Donovan, and commercials for Dior, YSL, Gucci, PlayStation 2 and the New York City Department of Sanitation.

Lynch also worked as a musician, releasing solo and collaborative albums, and as a furniture designer, cartoonist, animator, photographer, sculptor, and author. A practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, he founded the David Lynch Foundation to fund meditation lessons for at-risk populations. A lifelong smoker, he died from complications of emphysema after being evacuated from his home due to the January 2025 Southern California wildfires.

My childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. Middle America as it's supposed to be. But on the cherry tree there's this pitch oozing out – some black, some yellow, and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath. Because I grew up in a perfect world, other things were a contrast.

David Keith Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana, on January 20, 1946. His father, Donald Walton Lynch (1915–2007), was a research scientist working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and his mother, Edwina "Sunny" Lynch (née Sundholm; 1919–2004), was an English-language tutor. Two of Lynch's maternal great-grandparents were Finnish-Swedish immigrants who arrived in the U.S. during the 19th century. He recalled that his father "would drive me through the woods in his green Forest Service truck, over dirt roads, through the most beautiful forests where the trees are very tall and shafts of sunlight come down and in the mountain streams the rainbow trout leap out and their little trout sides catch glimpses of light. Then my father would drop me in the woods and go off. It was a weird, comforting feeling being in the woods." He was raised as a Presbyterian. The Lynch family often moved around according to where the USDA assigned Donald: Lynch moved with his parents to Sandpoint, Idaho, when he was two months old; two years later, after his brother John was born, the family moved to Spokane, Washington. Lynch's sister Martha was born there. The family then moved to Durham, North Carolina, Boise, Idaho, and Alexandria, Virginia. Lynch adjusted to this transitory early life with relative ease, noting that he usually had no difficulty making new friends when he attended a new school. Of his early life, he remarked:

I found the world completely and totally fantastic as a child. Of course, I had the usual fears, like going to school ... for me, back then, school was a crime against young people. It destroyed the seeds of liberty. The teachers didn't encourage knowledge or a positive attitude.

Alongside his schooling, Lynch joined the Boy Scouts. Later, he said he "became [a Scout] so I could quit and put it behind me", and rose to the highest rank of Eagle Scout. Lynch befriended Toby Keeler, whose father, Bushnell, was a painter. Bushnell gave Lynch The Art Spirit by Robert Henri. It was a revelation, and Lynch decided to dedicate himself to "the art life".