David Lynch, the American filmmaker, writer and artist who scored best director Oscar nominations for "Blue Velvet," "The Elephant Man" and "Mulholland Drive" and co-created the groundbreaking TV series "Twin Peaks,

Lynch, who was born in Montana in 1946, was a writer, director and painter who studied at the American Film Institute. He first broke into the movie scene in 1977 when he turned his thesis project into his first feature film "Eraserhead," a black-and-white surrealist indie film that quickly gained notoriety as a midnight movie.