David Lynch, an influential director known for his unique and surrealistic films and TV shows including "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks," has died. He was 78. His death was confirmed via his official Facebook page, where his family wrote: "It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There's a big hole in the world now that he's no longer with us. But, as he would say, 'Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.'" "It's a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way." CNN has reached out to Lynch's foundation for further comment. A cause of death has not been disclosed. Lynch's almost-50-year cinematic career was distinguished by a series of distinctive, highly stylized films that often feature surreal situations, fragmented timelines, and supernatural elements. He was awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2006 and an honorary Oscar in 2019 for "a lifetime of artistic accomplishment." He was also a four-time Oscar nominee in competitive categories, including three times for best director for 1980's "Elephant Man," 1986's "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive" from 2001. In 2024, Lynch announced that he had been diagnosed with emphysema after many years of smoking, and that he was largely "housebound" due to the risks of contracting Covid-19. After sharing the news, Lynch assured his supporters that he planned to keep working, writing that despite his diagnosis, "I am filled with happiness, and I will never retire." Born in Missoula, Montana, in 1946, Lynch spent his childhood moving to different parts of the US due to his father's job as a research scientist for the US Department of Agriculture. Although he achieved fame as a filmmaker, Lynch started his career as a painter and visual artist, studying at Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and finally at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. It was in Philadelphia that in addition to starting a family, Lynch first started experimenting with filmmaking, inspired by the idea of making his paintings move. "I was painting, and the painting, as I said before, I was painting very dark paintings. And I saw some little part of this figure moving, and I hear a wind," he said in a 1997 interview. "And I really wanted these things to move and have a sound with them. And so I started making an animated film as a moving painting. And that was it." Lynch's early experiments with the medium reflect his penchant for strange subject matter and creative visuals: his first short, "Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)," is an experimental animation, featuring figures vomiting in sequence. In 1970, he moved with his family to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in the American Film Institute Conservatory and started work on his first feature film: the cult classic "Eraserhead," a kind of body horror meets parenthood drama flick. The black-and-white film, was released in 1977 and has screened for years as a midnight feature. Lynch followed up "Eraserhead" with the commercial hit "The Elephant Man," starring John Hurt as Joseph Merrick, and "Dune," a widely panned adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel. His next feature film, "Blue Velvet," features many of the themes that recur throughout his work: a dreamlike plot involving sex and violence, a suburban setting that belies the seedy underworld beneath, and performances by frequent Lynch collaborators Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern. In 1990, Lynch debuted both "Wild at Heart" – a romantic crime film starring Dern and Nicolas Cage that took home the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival – and "Twin Peaks," one of the most impactful works of his career. The cult classic TV show features MacLachlan as a courteous but eccentric FBI agent investigating the mysterious murder of the homecoming queen in the quaint fictional town of Twin Peaks. The show's first season received 14 Emmy nominations. Although it was cancelled after just two seasons, the series has been cited as one of the most influential TV shows of all time. MacLachlan remembered Lynch as an "enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative ocean bursting forth inside of him," and credited Lynch for helping him build the career he has today. "His love for me and mine for him came out of the cosmic fate of two people who saw the best things about themselves in each other," MacLachlan wrote on his Instagram page Thursday. "I will miss him more than the limits of my language can tell and my heart can bear. My world is that much fuller because I knew him and that much emptier now that he's gone." In the last 20 years, Lynch took something of a prolonged hiatus from feature filmmaking. His last feature film, 2006's "Inland Empire," is a psychological thriller starring Dern, Jeremy Irons and Justin Theroux. In the interim, he has helmed several shorts and music videos, including for Interpol and Nine Inch Nails. In 2017, Lynch debuted the long-awaited third season of Twin Peaks, "Twin Peaks: The Return," set 25 years after the original series. And although he is best known as a filmmaker, Lynch continued the painting practice that started his career as an artist and dabbled in music, releasing a rock album called "BlueBob" in 2001, an EP called "This Train" in 2011, and a "modern blues" album called "The Big Dream" in 2013. "I only wanted to ever be a painter, but painting led into filmmaking," he said of his career in a 2019 interview with the New York Times. "I always say, I go where the ideas take me." Another through-line that defined Lynch was his commitment to transcendental meditation, which according to the website for The David Lynch Foundation is a "technique practiced 20 minutes twice a day while sitting comfortably with the eyes closed." In a statement on his site, the filmmaker wrote that he started the practice in 1973 and had "not missed a single meditation ever since. Twice a day, every day." "It has given me effortless access to unlimited reserves of energy, creativity and happiness deep within," he added. "This level of life is sometimes called 'pure consciousness'—it is a treasury. And this level of life is deep within us all." Speaking with Vulture in 2018, the director said that despite their sometimes-morbid subject matter, the source of his films was ultimately joy. "The thing is, if you get an idea that you love and you want to realize it, then the trip of realizing it should be joyful and the result should be joyful," he said. "Happiness is not a new car; it's the doing of the work. If you like the doing, the result will be a joy." — CNN
