David Lynch net worth is $60 Million. Also know about David Lynch bio, salary, height, age weight, relationship and more …

David Lynch Wiki Biography

David Lynch was born on the 20th January 1946, in Missoula, Montana USA, of Finnish descent, and is a film director, writer, actor, visual artist, musician and author, but probably best known for producing the movie “Eraserhead” (1977), and directing the critically acclaimed “The Elephant Man” (1980), and “Blue Velvet” (1986). Lynch was also a creator of the cult TV series called “Twin Peaks” (1990-1991). He has four Oscar nominations since his career started in 1966.

Have you ever wondered how rich David Lynch is, as of late 2016? According to authoritative sources, it has been estimated that David Lynch’s net worth is as high as $60 million, an amount earned through his successful career as a director and screenwriter. In addition to being one of the most distinguished filmmakers in the history of cinema, Lynch has also worked as an actor, and is a multitalented artist; he is also a renowned visual artist and musician. All of his talents have helped him to increase his net worth.

David Lynch is a son of Edwina “Sunny”, an English language tutor, and Donald Walton Lynch, a research scientist working for the US Department of Agriculture; he was raised as a Presbyterian. The family moved a lot because of Donald’s assignments, so they lived in Idaho, North Carolina, and Virginia during David’s childhood. He was schooled largely at Francis C. Hammond High School in Alexandria, Virginia, but wasn’t a great student, but he was a member of the Boy Scouts too. Soon after, he decided to move to Boston and enrol at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1964.

With an interest in being an artist, and inspired by the famous painter Oskar Kokoschka, Lynch went to the latter’ss school in Salzburg, Austria, and, but his planned stay of three years finished after only 15 days because Kokoschka wasn’t there, and so returned to the US. In 1966, David began his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he started his directing career with a short film called “Six Men Getting Sick”. He made three more shorts: “Absurd Encounter with Fear” (1967), “The Alphabet” (1968), and “The Grandmother” (1970) before moved to Los Angeles to study filmmaking at the AFI Conservatory in 1971.

After five years of production and many financial problems to complete his projects, Lynch finally released his debut feature film called “Eraserhead” (1977) starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, and Allen Joseph. Numerous producers were impressed with Lynch’s style and ideas, so he got the opportunity to make another movie in 1980 called “The Elephant Man”, with Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, and Anne Bancroft; the film was an instant hit, with eight Oscar nominations, and grossed over $30 million at the box office.

Now, Lynch was an acclaimed director, and his net worth rose with his success. He continued to create unique movies such as “Dune” (1984) starring Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, and Francesca Annis, and “Blue Velvet” (1986) with Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, and Dennis Hopper. Both movies earned Oscar nominations while Lynch established his connection with Kyle MacLachlan, who became his leading actor in more projects to come. He also has his favourite actress – Laura Dern, and she had her first collaboration with Lynch in “Wild at Heart” (1990) with Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe and Diane Ladd. David and Mark Frost created the cult TV series “Twin Peaks” in 1990, and Lynch again chose Kyle MacLachlan to play the main character, an idiosyncratic FBI Agent Dale Cooper. The show won three Golden Globe awards and is one of the most popular series of our time. Lynch’s net worth continued to rise.

Two years later, Lynch made a movie based on the series called “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me”, and “Lost Highway” in 1997, one of his most underrated films starring Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, and John Roselius. In 1999, he directed an Oscar-nominated drama “The Straight Story” with Richard Farnsworth and Sissy Spacek in leading roles, and in 2001, Lynch wrote and directed the enigmatic mystery called “Mulholland Drive” starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, and Justin Theroux. A year later, David made “Rabbits”, based on his short film from earlier in his career, while his latest featured films are “Inland Empire” (2006) with Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, and Justin Theroux, and “Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces” (2014) starring Chris Isaak, Kiefer Sutherland, and C.H. Evans. He is currently in the post-production of the remake of “Twin Peaks”, which will be out in 2017.

David Lynch also appeared in several of his own movies such as “The Elephant Man” (1980), “Dune” (1984), and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” (1992), usually having a small role, while he also played in Tina Rathborne’s “Zelly and Me” (1988), and “Nadja” (1994). Although known as a filmmaker, Lynch also had over 20 exhibitions as a painter, and he stated that Francis Bacon is his hero artist, while he is a fan of photographers such as William Eggleston, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Diane Arbus.

This multi-talented artist has also released two studio albums called “Crazy Clown Time”(2011) and “The Big Dream”(2013) – both of them were commercially successful and additionally improved Lynch’s wealth.

Regarding his personal life, David Lynch was married to Peggy Lentz from 1967 to 1974 and has a daughter with her.. He then married Mary Fisk in 1977, but they divorced in 1987 after having a son. Lynch dated Isabella Rossellini, was briefly married to Mary Sweeney(2006-07), but married his third wife, Emily Stofle, in 2009, and has a daughter with her. David currently lives in Los Angeles.

IMDB Wikipedia (1.8 m) $60 Million 1946 1946-01-20 AFI Conservatory Allen Joseph American Anne Bancroft Anthony Hopkins Art Department Austin Jack Lynch Bill Pullman C.H. Evans Charlotte Stewart Chris Isaak Corcoran School of the Arts David Lynch David Lynch Net Worth Dennis Hopper Design AFI Conservatory Diane Arbus Director Donald Walton Lynch Donald Walton LynchEdwina Edwina Edwina Lynch Emily Stofle (m. 2009) Francesca Annis Isabella Rossellini Jack Nance January 20 Jennifer Lynch Jeremy Irons Joel-Peter Witkin John Hurt John Lynch John Roselius Justin Theroux Kiefer Sutherland Kyle MacLachlan Laura Dern Laura Harring Lula Boginia Lynch Mark Frost Martha Lynch Mary Fisk (m. 1977–1987) Mary Sweeney (m. 2006–2007) Missoula Montana Naomi Watts Nicolas Cage Oskar Kokoschka Patricia Arquette Peggy Lentz Mary Fisk Mary Sweeney Emily Stofle Peggy Lynch (m. 1967–1974) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Richard Farnsworth Riley Lynch Sissy Spacek Tina Rathborne Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts United States Virginia Madsen Willem Dafoe and Diane Ladd William Eggleston

David Lynch Quick Info

David Lynch Trademarks

1. Frequently wiggles his fingers while he is talking
2. Very heavy use of black and dark lighting in order to augment colorful objects in scenes.
3. Never explains the meaning of his movies
4. Many of his films examine the dark side of American suburbia.
5. Films are often sexually charged and graphically violent
6. Quirky, nasal voice
7. Close up shots of eyes
8. Uses Roy Orbison songs in his films
9. Constant references to dreams as a way of connecting the plot and twists in his films.
10. Uses many references to France, the French language, culture, people, and names.
11. Almost always casts a musician for a supporting role: Sting in Dune (1984); Chris Isaak, David Bowie, Julee Cruise, and ‘Miguel Ferrer’ (son and former drummer of Rosemary Clooney in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992); Marilyn Manson and Henry Rollins in Lost Highway (1997); Billy Ray Cyrus, Rebekah Del Rio and Angelo Badalamenti in Mulholland Dr. (2001). Regular collaborator Kyle MacLachlan is also descended from composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
12. Red curtains, strobe lights, and extreme surrealism
13. Use of slow-motion during key scenes of violence
14. Has a taste for low/middle frequency noise, dark and rotting environments, distorted characters, a polarized world (angels vs demons, Madonnas vs whores), and debilitating damage to the skull or brain.
15. Finds small-town USA fascinating
16. Has frequently cast Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee,Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, Sherilyn Fenn, Harry Dean Stanton, Michael J. Anderson, Everett McGill, Frances Bay, Dean Stockwell, David Patrick Kelly, Brad Dourif, Catherine E. Coulson, Grace Zabriskie, Ian Buchanan, Alicia Witt, and Bellina Logan.

David Lynch Quotes

• I like the idea that everything has a surface which hides much more underneath. Someone can look very well and have a whole bunch of diseases cooking: there are all sorts of dark, twisted things lurking down there. I go down in that darkness and see what’s there. Coffee shops are nice safe places to think. I like sitting in brightly lit places where I can drink coffee and have some sugar. Then, before I know it, I’m down under the surface gliding along; if it becomes too heavy, I can always pop back into the coffee shop.
• [on being asked if he takes drugs] Yes, I eat a tremendous amount of sugar!
• Every idea that you fall in love with is a gift. How the ideas come is the trick.
• Be true to yourself. Find your own voice and be true to that voice. Never take a bad idea, but never turn down a good idea. And, of course, have final cut.
• I’m in a transition. I am painting, and I am painting over and then painting, and then painting over, and destroying, and painting, and destroying, and painting over.
• I always give credit to Angelo Badalamenti for bringing me into the world of music.
• I say Eraserhead (1977) is my The Philadelphia Story (1940). I like smoke and fire and the sounds of the factories.
• Dune (1984) I didn’t have final cut on. It’s the only film I’ve made where I didn’t have, I didn’t technically have final cut on The Elephant Man (1980) but Mel Brooks gave it to me, and on Dune (1984) the film, I started selling out even in the script phase knowing I didn’t have final cut, and I sold out, so it was a slow dying- the-death and a terrible terrible experience. I don’t know how it happened, I trusted that it would work out but it was very naive and, the wrong move. In those days the maximum length they figured I could have is two hours and seventeen minutes, and that’s what the film is, so they wouldn’t lose a screening a day, so once again it’s money talking and not for the film at all and so it was like compacted and it hurt it, it hurt it. There is no other version. There’s more stuff, but even that is putrefied.
• I started selling out on Dune (1984). Looking back, it’s no one’s fault but my own. I probably shouldn’t have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved, and this was the structure to do them in. There was so much room to create a world. But I got strong indications from Raffaella and Dino De Laurentiis of what kind of film they expected, and I knew I didn’t have final cut.
• [on Eraserhead (1977)] Then we showed it to a guy who was a friend of Terrence Malick – his financial backer, I think. Terry was trying to help me get some money and he said, ‘I want to show some scenes to this man, maybe he’ll help you.’ But Terry had not seen anything. So we organized several scenes, and this man came in and sat down and I was, you know, trembling. I was at the console with Al [sound designer Alan Splet] And in the middle of this thing the man stood up and screamed: ‘PEOPLE DON’T ACT LIKE THAT! PEOPLE DON’T TALK LIKE THAT! THIS IS BULLSHIT!’ And out he went. But, like, really upset. And Ron, the projectionist upstairs, heard this and everybody was just looking at each other. so I thought, ‘Man!’, you know, ‘This is gonna be really difficult!’ [from “Lynch on Lynch”: revised edition, page 82]
• [2008 interview] Now if you’re playing a movie on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film. You’ll think you have experienced it, but you’ll be cheated. It’s such a sadness that you think you’ve seen a film on your fucking telephone. Get real.
• An inner anger is poison. A person who is angry is poisoning them self and poisoning the environment.
• There’s a comfort when you realize your ideas are realized. You’ve worked so that all the elements are working together and it feels complete and correct and you say it’s done. Then it goes out into the world, but it doesn’t need any more explanation. It is what it is. Cinema is such a beautiful language [but] as soon as people finish a film, people want you to turn it into words. It’s kind of a sadness for me: the words are limiting.
• Desiring an idea is like bait on a hook. You can pull them in. If you catch an idea that you love, that’s a beautiful day, and you write it down. That idea might just be a fragment of the whole, but now you have even more bait. Thinking about that small fragment, that little fish will bring in more. Pretty soon you may have a script.
• It’s thrilling for me to play an electric guitar. I like to think of it as a gasoline-powered engine. Running rough, with a loud muffler.
• I loved smoking cigarettes as a child. I loved matches. I loved lighting matches.
• Sometimes when you pass a house and you see that the door’s closed, the window blinds are closed, you wonder what’s going on in there. We all get feelings from places. Some feelings are happy feelings, and some don’t put out such happy feelings. There seems to be something more.
• [on ‘Richard Farnsworth’ in The Straight Story (1999)] A lot of times people say someone was born to play a certain role. If there was ever a case for that, this is it. The film hangs on his performance. There’s nobody who could have done it like he did. He has a quality, which is in all the films he’s been in, that just makes you want to instantly love this guy. He fits the definition of an actor – a person who makes something real.
• [on The Straight Story (1999)] Some people still wait for something very bad to happen in the movie. Also, somebody was standing in line for a preview screening and a lady behind them said, ‘Isn’t it odd that there are two directors named David Lynch.’
• [on The Straight Story (1999)] I wanted the film to have a floating feeling. I particularly wanted that quality to come through in the aerial landscape shots, and it took a lot of explaining to get the helicopter pilots to slow down enough to get the look I was after.
• People say my films are dark. But like lightness, darkness stems from a reflection of the world. The thing is, I get these ideas that I truly fall in love with. And a good movie idea is often like a girl you’re in love with, but you know she’s not the kind of girl you bring home to your parents, because they sometimes hold some dark and troubling things.
• I was driving through Central Park with Kyle MacLachlan and on the radio came Crying by Roy Orbison. I started listening to this song and I’m thinking only of Blue Velvet (1986) and I’m thinking this song could appear in the film. Once we were filming in Virginia, I ask for Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits and I hear In Dreams and boom! An explosion goes off in my head. And I think, “This is it.” Dennis [Hopper] was supposed to sing that and Dean Stockwell was supposed to listen but Dennis couldn’t remember the lines. And I thought, “Wait a minute, Dean will sing and Dennis will listen.” It was a magical thing.
• [on actress Sherilyn Fenn] She’s a mysterious girl and I think that actresses like her who have a mystery – where there’s something hiding beneath the surface – are the really interesting ones. (Premiere UK, July 1993)
• [on actress Joan Chen] She’s the best thing from China since pasta – and much more beautiful. (People, May 04, 1992)
• [on Eyes Wide Shut (1999)] I really love Eyes Wide Shut. I just wonder if Stanley Kubrick really did finish it the way he wanted to before he died.
• [remarking about Elvis Presley’s reported comment to one of his backup singers that he thought no one would remember him] That’s incredible. Elvis swims in our minds, and in the emotions all through time.
• [on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)] I love that film. I say now that The Straight Story (1999) is my most experimental movie, but up until then, “Fire Walk With Me” was my most experimental film, and some of the things, the combos, you know, like, sequences . . . It was a dark film, but like Peggy Lipton said in an interview, it was just too much in people’s faces, and it didn’t have the humor of Twin Peaks (1990). So it was what it was supposed to be, but it wasn’t what people wanted. It was supposed to be stand-alone, but it was also supposed to be the last week of Laura Palmer’s life. And all those things that had been established, they could be pleasant on one level to experience, but unpleasant on another level.
• [on Sheryl Lee and her performance in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)] It turns out, at least in my opinion, she’s an unbelievable actress and there are things that she’s done in this movie that are truly incredible. I haven’t seen too many people get into a role and give it as much. So, the big news for me was this person was hired to be a dead girl and turns out to be a great actress and a perfect Laura Palmer.
• I let the actors work out their ideas before shooting, then tell them what attitudes I want. If a scene isn’t honest, it stands out like a sore thumb.
• Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there’s humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.
• [on why his officially sanctioned DVDs contain no chapter stops] It is my opinion that a film is not like a book–it should not be broken up. It is a continuum and should be seen as such.
• [on his 1965 sojourn to Europe to study art] I intended to stay three years. Instead, I stayed 15 days! I remember lying in an Athens basement with lizards crawling along the walls and contemplating that I was 7,000 miles from McDonalds!
• [on his 1965 sojourn to Europe to study art] I didn’t take to Europe. I was all the time thinking, “This is where I’m going to be painting”. And there was no inspiration there at all for the kind of work I wanted to do.
• My father was a scientist for the Forest Service. He 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. There were odd, mysterious things. That’s the kind of world I grew up in.
• As a teenager, I was really trying to have fun 24 hours a day. I didn’t start thinking until I was 20 or 21. I was doing regular goof-ball stuff.
• There was nothing much going on upstairs until the age of nineteen.
• In a large city I realized there was a large amount of fear. Coming from the Northwest, it kind of hits you like a train.
• [on actor Kyle MacLachlan]: “What do we do together? I have a pretty good cappuccino machine, and anytime he gets the urge, he comes on over. We talk about the problems associated with getting a good cup of coffee.”
• I like things to be orderly. For seven years I ate at Bob’s Big Boy. I would go at 2:30, after the lunch rush. I ate a chocolate shake and four, five, six, seven cups of coffee–with lots of sugar. And there’s lots of sugar in that chocolate shake. It’s a thick shake. In a silver goblet. I would get a rush from all this sugar, and I would get so many ideas! I would write them on these napkins. It was like I had a desk with paper. All I had to do was remember to bring my pen, but a waitress would give me one if I remembered to return it at the end of my stay. I got a lot of ideas at Bob’s.
• Sex was like a world so mysterious to me, I really couldn’t believe there was this fantastic texture to life that I was getting to do…it has all these different levels, from lust and fearful, violent sex to the real spiritual thing at the other end. It’s the key to some fantastic mystery of life.
• Cigarettes are pretty much my worst vice, and I even stopped smoking for 20 years. I spend most of my free time with my family and working on art.
• There’s something deeply satisfying about directing the flow of water.
• My mother refused to give me coloring books as a child. She probably saved me, Because when you think about it, what a coloring book does is completely kill creativity.
• I’m convinced we all are voyeurs. It’s part of the detective thing. We want to know secrets and we want to know what goes on behind those windows. And not in a way that we would use to hurt anyone. There’s an entertainment value to it, but at the same time we want to know: What do humans do? Do they do the same things as I do? It’s a gaining of some sort of knowledge, I think.
• Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way. Being explicit doesn’t tap into the mystical aspect of it either in fact, that usually kills it because people don’t want to see sex so much as they want to experience the emotions that go along with it. These things are hard to convey in film because sex is such a mystery.
• I’m not sure what these people are saying. Is it that if you depicted no graphic violence, the world would calm down and there would be less violence? Or is it that if you sense certain things about violence and then portray those things in a film, does that make the violence go to another level? Or is the violence in films a way to experience something without having to do it in real life?
• All my movies are about strange worlds that you can’t go into unless you build them and film them. That’s what’s so important about film to me. I just like going into strange worlds.
• I would rather not make a film than make one where I don’t have final cut.
• I like to make films because I like to go into another world. I like to get lost in another world. And film to me is a magical medium that makes you dream…allows you to dream in the dark. It’s just a fantastic thing, to get lost inside the world of film.
• [on plans to build 100 transcendental meditation centers to bring an end to crime and war]: “Peace could be on this Earth this year. It would be a whole new world.”
• I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.
• [His films] mean different things to different people. Some mean more or less the same things to a large number of people. It’s okay. Just as long as there’s not one message, spoon-fed. That’s what films by committee end up being, and it’s a real bummer to me . . . Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.
• I’ve said many, many, many unkind things about Philadelphia, and I meant every one.
• I think that ideas exist outside of ourselves. I think somewhere, we’re all connected off in some very abstract land. But somewhere between there and here ideas exist. And I think the mind isn’t conscious enough to go all the way to where we’re connected, but it’s conscious of a certain amount of that territory. And when these ideas fly into the conscious part, then you can capture them. But if they’re outside of the conscious part, you don’t even know about them. So you just hope that you can make the conscious part of your mind bigger or that these ideas will fly into your airspace, so you can shoot them down and grab them and take them home. So that’s all you try to do. Sometimes an idea will strike you when you’re sitting in a quiet chair. But sometimes an idea will strike you when you’re standing. Sometimes music will also help you. If I thought I could just sit still in a quiet place and get ideas, I would do that all the time, but sometimes nothing happens. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. But you’ve got to write them down right away. I forget so many things. Then if I forget it and try to remember it, my whole day is ruined because I can’t remember and I feel horrible. And I imagine that it was one of the all time great ideas. And it probably isn’t.
• In Hollywood, more often than not, they’re making more kind of traditional films, stories that are understood by people. And the entire story is understood. And they become worried if even for one small moment something happens that is not understood by everyone. But what’s so fantastic is to get down into areas where things are abstract and where things are felt, or understood in an intuitive way that, you can’t, you know, put a microphone to somebody at the theatre and say ‘Did you understand that?’ but they come out with a strange, fantastic feeling and they can carry that, and it opens some little door or something that’s magical and that’s the power that film has.
• To give a sense of place, to me, is a thrilling thing. And a sense of place is made up of details. And so the details are incredibly important. If they’re wrong, then it throws you out of the mood. And so the sound and music and color and shape and texture, if all those things are correct and a woman looks a certain way with a certain kind of light and says the right word, you’re gone, you’re in heaven. But it’s all the little details.
• It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It’s better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it’s a very personal thing, and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else.
• I’m not a real film buff. Unfortunately, I don’t have time. I just don’t go. And I become very nervous when I go to a film because I worry so much about the director and it is hard for me to digest my popcorn.
• I sort of go by a duck when I work on a film because if you study a duck, you’ll see certain things. You’ll see a bill, and the bill is a certain texture and a certain length. Then you’ll see a head, and the features on the head are a certain texture and it’s a certain shape and it goes into the neck. The texture of the bill for instance is very smooth and it has quite precise detail in it and it reminds you somewhat of the legs. The legs are a little bit bigger and a little more rubbery but it’s enough so that your eye goes back and forth. Now, the body being so big, it can be softer and the texture is not so detailed, it’s just kind of a cloud. And the key to the whole duck is the eye and where the eye is placed. And it has to be placed in the head and it’s the most detailed, and it’s like a little jewel. And if it was fixed, sitting on the bill, it would be two things that were too busy, battling, they would not do so well. And if it was sitting in the middle of the body, it would get lost. But it’s so perfectly placed to show off a jewel right in the middle of the head like that, next to this S-curve with the bill sitting out in front, but with enough distance so that the eye is very very very well secluded and set out. So when you’re working on a film, a lot of times you can get the bill and the legs and the body and everything, but this eye of the duck is a certain scene, this jewel, that if it’s there, it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s just fantastic.” “Film exists because we can go and have experiences that would be pretty dangerous or strange for us in real life. We can go into a room and walk into a dream. If we didn’t want to upset anyone, we would make films about sewing, but even that could be dangerous. But I think finally, in a film, it is how the balance is and the feelings are. But I think there has to be those contrasts and strong things withing a film for the total experience.
• It’s better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you’ll be too afraid to let things keep happening. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it’s lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience.

David Lynch Important Facts

• $1,000
• At the 1986 Montreal Film Festival, where Blue Velvet first premiered, he met Giulietta Masina, wife & frequent muse of Federico Fellini, one of his favorite film directors.
• In the late 1980s, he directed 4 TV commercials for Calvin Klein’s Obsession perfume based on excerpts from novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence and Gustave Flaubert and featuring Benicio Del Toro, Heather Graham, Lara Flynn Boyle, James Marshall, Rodney Harvey and Ian Buchanan.
• Disowned Dune (1984), considering it the only real failure of his career. To this day, he refuses to talk about the production in great detail, and has refused numerous offers to work on a special edition DVD. Lynch claims revisiting the film would be too painful an experience to endure.
• Was asked to direct Manhunter (1986).
• Sheryl Lee credits him as one of the most incredible teachers that she’s ever had in terms of filmmaking.
• Lodz, Poland. Discussing his plans for building post production film studio in an old factory on Targowa street. [May 2004]
• In 2002, Lynch paid $1 million to spend a month studying Transcendental Meditation along with a few other well-heeled adherents in a compound in the Netherlands with the movement’s founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Maharishi was living in the house, but only communicated with the group via TV conferencing.
• Has three siblings, including brother John Lynch.
• Among the places he lived in his rootless childhood were Missoula, Montana (his birth place), Sandpoint, Idaho (where his family moved when he was only 2 months old), Spokane, Washington, Durham, North Carolina, Boise, Idaho and Alexandria, Virginia (where he attended high school).
• 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.
• Directed 3 actors in Oscar nominated performances: John Hurt, Diane Ladd, and Richard Farnsworth.
• His ancestry is Finnish, German and Irish. His Irish Ancestry can be traced to Galway and as far back as being descended from Rollo, a Viking King.
• Has worked with real-life father-son pair José Ferrer and Miguel Ferrer in Dune (1984) and Twin Peaks (1990); and real-life mother-daughter pair Diane Ladd and Laura Dern in Wild at Heart (1990) and Blue Velvet (1986).
• The car accident scene in Wild at Heart (1990) came from his impression of actress Sherilyn Fenn as a china doll, and from the idea of seeing a porcelain doll breaking. He told her, “I envisioned this broken China doll, all bloody, and ranting and raving, and it was you”.
• He was so impressed by Sheryl Lee’s performance as the dead Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks (1990)’ pilot episode that he wrote the role of Maddy Ferguson for her, in order to bring her back in the series.
• Sherilyn Fenn, who worked with him in Twin Peaks (1990) and Wild at Heart (1990), later starred in his daughter Jennifer Lynch’s directorial debut Boxing Helena (1993).
• Some of his favorite films of all time are: 8½ (1963), La Strada (1954), Sunset Blvd. (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).
• Frequently works with Crispin Glover.
• Born to Donald Lynch, a research scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and his wife Sunny, an English language tutor.
• Served as an usher at the Presidential Inauguration of John F. Kennedy (20 January 1961).
• Although having planned to study with painter Oskar Kokoschka in Austria for three years, he returned to the US after only 15 days.
• 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).
• Being an avid coffee drinker, he has own line of special organic blends.
• Is mentioned in German author Patrick Roth’s short story “Lynch for Lunch” (2008).
• Is friends with Mädchen Amick.
• 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.
• Was engaged to Italian actress Isabella Rossellini from 1986 to 1990.
• Though on the surface his alliance with Mel Brooks on The Elephant Man (1980) would seem unlikely to many, a number of Lynch’s films are interpreted as being satirical of traditional Hollywood clichés (Mulholland Dr. (2001), Wild at Heart (1990), Blue Velvet (1986) albeit in a much darker and artistic way than in the films that made Brooks a success (Young Frankenstein (1974), Blazing Saddles (1974), etc.).
• His grandmother was German.
• 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!'”
• Is friends with Kyle MacLachlan.
• Was very good friends with Jack Nance.
• 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.
• Is famous (or infamous) for not saying anything on Eraserhead (1977). He lets the viewers decide what it means.
• President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002.
• He drew and wrote the comic strip, “The Angriest Dog in the World” that ran in the Los Angeles Reader newspaper throughout the 1980s.
• 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.
• In addition to excluding chapter breaks in his approved DVD releases of his movies, he hasn’t recorded an audio commentary in any of his films. This is because he believes that films speak for themselves.
• Has cited Luis Buñuel, Werner Herzog, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, and Roman Polanski as some of his influences.
• Insisted his name be struck from the 190-minute Extended Cut of Dune (1984), which was prepared specially for television. That version credits the pseudonymous “Judas Booth” as writer/director. Yet in 2009 – the movie’s 25th anniversary – Lynch (by a fan’s request) actually signed Booth’s name to a vintage “Making of Dune (1984) paperback at West Hollywood’s famous Book Soup.
• 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.
• He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia
• His son, Austin Jack Lynch, appeared in an episode of Twin Peaks (1990) as Pierre Tremond, or the Creamed-Corn Kid. The role (billed as Pierre Tremond/Chalfont) went to Jonathan J. Leppell in the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). It is widely rumored that Jonathan is Lynch’s nephew, but Jonathan and his mother had never heard of Lynch or the TV show when he was cast in Seattle. Julee Cruise, who appears in Twin Peaks (1990), is his musical protégée. Lynch wrote the lyrics on her first album, some of the lyrics of her second album, and occasionally plays an instrument on her recordings.
• While in college, roomed with Peter Wolf, former lead singer with the J. Geils Band. Lynch kicked him out, however, because he thought Wolf was “too weird.”
• 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).
• After George Lucas saw Eraserhead (1977), he offered Lynch the chance to direct Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) but Lynch turned him down. Lynch felt the film would be more Lucas’s vision than his own.
• After the financial disaster that was Dune (1984), Lynch and Dino De Laurentiis were almost ready to part company but Lynch showed Dino the script for Blue Velvet (1986), which he had been working on for some time, and the two combined talents to make the seminal 1986 classic.
• Wrote the Gordon Cole character (from Twin Peaks (1990)) with himself in mind.
• Producer Dino De Laurentiis offered him the chance to direct “Hand-Carved Coffins” based on a Truman Capote work, but Lynch turned it down; to date the project has not been produced.
• Projects he has written but to date has not produced include “Ronnie Rocket,” “Up at the Lake,” and “One Saliva Bubble.”
• 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).
• Personally approved DVD releases of his movies do not have any chapter stops. This is done because he believes that films are meant to be viewed from beginning to end.
• 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.
• His father had Scottish, Irish, and English ancestry. His mother was of half Finnish and half German descent. His Irish ancestry can be traced to Galway and as far back as being descended from Rollo, a Viking King.
• Is an Eagle Scout.
• Ate lunch at Bob’s Big Boy in Los Angeles, California, nearly every day for almost eight years in a row.

David Lynch Filmography

David Lynch Awards