Hollywood is mourning the death of a movie legend.
David Lynch—a critically acclaimed director who made films including 1986's Blue Velvet and 2001's Mulholland Drive—has died, his family announced on social media. He was 78.
"I’ve gotten emphysema from smoking for so long and I’m homebound whether I like it or not,” Lynch told Sight & Sound in September 2024. “It would be very bad for me to get sick, even with a cold.”
The exact cause of Lynch's death has not been shared.
Lynch rose to fame in the late 1970s with his debut feature-length film Eraserhead, which introduced his unique, dreamlike style of filmmaking. Three years later, he earned his first-ever Oscar nomination for Best Director with 1980's Elephant Man, starring John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft. And while he never took home the trophy in the category, he did earn nods for Best Director two more times, with 1986's Blue Velvet and 2001's Mulholland Drive. Nearly two decades later, the Oscars awarded him an Honorary Academy Award in celebration of his decades-long contribution to film.
And Lynch received several accolades for his work in television as well. In 1991, his show Twin Peaks—which he co-wrote and directed—scored him nominations for both writing and directing at the Primetime Emmy Awards. Additionally, his 2017 limited series revival of the mystery drama racked up nominations at the ceremony for Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Cinematography.
And though he will certainly be remembered as a master of his craft, Lynch previously shared that he had no intention of becoming a director.
"I wanted to be a painter," Lynch explained in a 2006 interview. "I was a painter, and I was in a studio working on a painting of a garden at night and the green was coming out of this black, and I heard a wind and I saw the green move, and said, 'Oh that is interesting' and I thought it would be good to do a moving painting."
That moving artwork—which earned him his first commission for a short film—quickly evolved into a newfound passion. As Lynch added, "That led to falling in love with film and getting green lights."