David Lynch's films are known for their elements of surrealism, their nightmarish and dreamlike sequences, their stark and strange images, and their meticulously crafted audio. Often his work explores the seedy underside of small-town U.S.A. (e.g. Blue Velvet and the Twin Peaks television series) or sprawling metropolises (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive). Due to his peculiar style and focus on the American psyche, producer Mel Brooks once called Lynch "Jimmy Stewart from Mars."

Over a lengthy career, Lynch has developed a consistent approach to narrative and visual style that has become instantly recognizable to audiences worldwide. Although not a box office giant, he is a consistent favorite of film critics and has maintained a strong cult following.

Lynch grew up an archetypal all-American boy. His father was a U.S. Department of Agriculture research scientist. He was raised throughout the Pacific Northwest. He attained the rank of Eagle Scout, and on his fifteenth birthday served as an usher at John F. Kennedy's Presidential inauguration.

With the intention of becoming an artist, Lynch attended classes at Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. while finishing high school. He enrolled in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for one year before leaving for Europe with the plan to study with expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. Though he had planned to stay for three years, Lynch returned to the US after 15 days.

In 1966, Lynch relocated to Philadelphia, attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) and made a series of complex mosaics in geometric shapes which he called Industrial Symphonies. Here too he began working with film. His first short film Six Figures Getting Sick (1966), which he described as "57 seconds of growth and fire, and three seconds of vomit," was played on a loop at an art exhibit. It won the Academy's annual film contest. This led to a commission from H. Barton Wasserman to do a film installation in his home. After a disastrous first attempt that resulted in a completely blurred, frameless print, Lynch created The Alphabet.

In 1970, Lynch turned his attention away from visual art and focused primarily on film. He won a $5,000 grant from the American Film Institute to produce The Grandmother, about a neglected boy who "grows" a grandmother from a seed. The 30-minute film exhibited many elements that would become Lynch trademarks, including unsettling sound and imagery and a focus on unconscious desires instead of traditional narration.

In 1971, Lynch moved to Los Angeles to attend the M.F.A. studies at the AFI Conservatory. At the Conservatory, Lynch began working on his first feature-length film, Eraserhead, using a $10,000 grant from the AFI. The grant did not provide enough money to complete the film and, due to lack of a sufficient budget, Eraserhead was filmed intermittently until 1977. Lynch used money from friends and family, including boyhood friend Jack Fisk, a production designer and the husband of actress Sissy Spacek, and even took a paper route to finish it.