An American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, characterised by dream imagery and meticulous sound design and in many cases disturbing violent elements.

He produced his first motion picture, the surrealist horror Eraserhead, in 1977. After Eraserhead became a cult classic, he directed The Elephant Man (1980), which gained him mainstream success. He then proceeded to make the science-fiction epic Dune (1984), which proved to be a critical and commercial failure, and then a neo-noir crime film, Blue Velvet (1986), which was highly critically acclaimed. With Mark Frost he created the highly popular murder mystery TV series, Twin Peaks (1990–1992). Turning further towards surrealist filmmaking, three of his following films worked on dreamlike non-linear narrative structures: Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006).

He has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, for The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, and also received a screenplay Academy Award nomination for The Elephant Man.