title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan's grandfather, Prakash first brought him on-screen at the age of six in the film "Aasha" (1980); he danced in a song enacted by Jeetendra, for which Prakash paid him 100. Roshan made uncredited appearances in various family film projects, including his father's production "Aap Ke Deewane" (1980). In Prakash's "Aas Paas" (1981), he appeared in the song "Shehar Main Charcha Hai". The actor's only speaking role during this period came when he was 12; he was seen as Govinda, the title character's adopted son, in Prakash's "Bhagwaan Dada" (1986). Roshan decided that he wanted to be a full-time actor, but his father insisted that he focus on his studies. In his early 20s, he was diagnosed with scoliosis that would not allow him to dance or perform stunts. Initially devastated, he eventually decided to become an actor anyway. Around a year after the diagnosis, he took a chance by jogging on a beach when he was caught in a downpour. There was no pain, and becoming more confident, he was able to increase his pace with no adverse effects. Roshan sees this day as "the turning point of [his] life."


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan attended Sydenham College, where he took part in dance and music festivals while studying, graduating in commerce. Roshan assisted his father on four films—"Khudgarz" (1987), "King Uncle" (1993), "Karan Arjun" (1995) and "Koyla" (1997)—while also sweeping the floor and making tea for the crew. After pack-up, Roshan would enact Shah Rukh Khan's scenes from "Koyla" and film himself to make a judgement about his performance as an actor. While he assisted his father, he studied acting under Kishore Namit Kapoor.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan was originally scheduled to make his screen debut as a lead actor opposite Preity Zinta in the cancelled film Shekhar Kapur's "Tara Rum Pum Pum". Instead, he starred in his father's romantic drama "Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai" (2000) opposite another debutante, Ameesha Patel. Roshan played dual roles: Rohit, an aspiring singer brutally killed after witnessing a murder, and Raj, an NRI who falls in love with Patel's character. To prepare, he trained with the actor Salman Khan to bulk up physically, worked to improve his diction and took lessons in acting, singing, dancing, fencing and riding. With global revenues of , "Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai" became one of the highest-grossing Indian films of 2000. His performance was acclaimed by critics; Suggu Kanchana on Rediff.com wrote, "[Roshan] is good. The ease and style with which he dances, emotes, fights, makes one forget this is his debut film ... He seems to be the most promising among the recent lot of star sons we have been subjected to." For the role, Roshan received Best Male Debut and Best Actor Awards at the annual Filmfare Awards, IIFA Awards, and Zee Cine Awards. He became the first actor to win both Filmfare Best Debut and Best Actor awards the same year. The film established Roshan as a prominent actor in Bollywood. The actor found life hard after his overnight success, particularly the demands on his time.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: In his second release, Khalid Mohammed's crime drama "Fiza", Roshan played Amaan, an innocent Muslim boy who becomes a terrorist after the 1992–93 Bombay riots. Roshan appeared in the film to expand his horizons as an actor. Co-starring Karisma Kapoor and Jaya Bachchan, "Fiza" was moderately successful at the box office, and Roshan's performance earned him a second nomination for Best Actor at the Filmfare ceremony. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama praised him as the production's prime asset, commending his "body language, his diction, his expressions, [and] his overall persona." Roshan next appeared in Vidhu Vinod Chopra's action drama "Mission Kashmir" (2000) alongside Sanjay Dutt, Preity Zinta, and Jackie Shroff. Set in the valley of Kashmir during the Indo-Pakistani conflicts, the film addressed the topics of terrorism and crime, and was a financial success. Roshan was drawn to his complex role of a young man traumatised by the discovery that his adoptive father had been responsible for the death of his entire birth family. In Adarsh's opinion, Roshan "brightens up the screen with his magnetic presence. His body language, coupled with his expressions, is sure to win him plaudits."


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: In 2001, Roshan appeared in two films, the first of which was Subhash Ghai's "Yaadein", a romantic drama which paired him with Kareena Kapoor and reunited him with Shroff. Although highly anticipated, "Yaadein" was reviled by critics; in "The Hindu", Ziya Us Salam criticised the director for relying on Roshan's commercial appeal. Roshan next had a supporting role in Karan Johar's ensemble melodrama "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..." alongside Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Kareena Kapoor. He was cast as Rohan Raichand—the younger son of Bachchan's character who plots to reunite him with his adopted son (played by Khan)—after Johar had watched a rough cut of "Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai". "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..." finished as India's highest-grossing film of the year, and among the most successful Bollywood films in the overseas market, earning worldwide. Writing for Rediff.com, Anjum N described Roshan as "the surprise scene-stealer", praising him for holding his own against the established actors. Roshan received a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: In 2002 Vikram Bhatt's romance "Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage" reunited him with Ameesha Patel but failed at the box office, as did Arjun Sablok's romance "Na Tum Jaano Na Hum" (2002), in which he co-starred with Saif Ali Khan and Esha Deol. The latter film was named after a song of the same name from his debut film Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai. Roshan's final role that year was in a Yash Raj Films production, the high-profile "Mujhse Dosti Karoge!" co-starring Rani Mukerji and Kareena Kapoor. The romantic comedy was heavily promoted before its release and made money internationally, though not in India. In another commercial failure, Sooraj R. Barjatya's "Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon", Roshan was cast alongside Kareena Kapoor for the fourth time, and Abhishek Bachchan. The press labelled Roshan a "one-trick pony" and suggested that the failure of these films would end his career.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan's career began to revive with a starring role in "Koi... Mil Gaya" (2003). The film, directed and produced by his father, centers on his character Rohit Mehra, a developmentally disabled young man, who comes in contact with an extraterrestrial being—a role that required him to lose nearly . Roshan recalls the experience of starring in the film fondly: "I could live my childhood [again]. I could eat as many chocolates as I wanted. I became a baby and everybody was so caring towards me." In the book "Film Sequels", Carolyn Jess-Cooke drew similarities between the character and Forrest Gump, portrayed by Tom Hanks in the titular film, but this idea was dismissed by Roshan. Film critics were polarised on their view of the film—some of them negatively compared its storyline to the 1982 Hollywood release "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial"—but were unanimous in their praise for Roshan. In a 2010 retrospective of the Top 80 Iconic Performances of Bollywood, "Filmfare" noted "how flesh and blood Hrithik's act is. Simply because he believes he is the part. Watch him laugh, cry or bond with his remote controlled alien friend and note his nuanced turn." A Rediff.com critic agreed that Roshan was "the turbojet that propels the film to the realm of the extraordinary." "Koi... Mil Gaya" was one of the most popular Bollywood films of the year, earning worldwide and Roshan won both Filmfare Awards for Best Actor and Best Actor (Critics).


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: The following year, Roshan collaborated with Amitabh Bachchan and Preity Zinta on Farhan Akhtar's "Lakshya" (2004), a fictionalised coming-of-age story set against events from the 1999 Kargil War. He also featured in the item number "Main Aisa Kyun Hoon" (choreographed by Prabhu Deva) which proved popular with audiences. Roshan found it "one of the most challenging films" of his career at the time and said it made him respect soldiers. Although trade journalists expected the film to do well commercially, it failed to attract a wide audience. Over the years, it has attained a cult status in India. For the film, Roshan earned Best Actor nominations at the Filmfare and Zee Cine ceremony. Manish Gajjar of the BBC praised Roshan's versatility and his transformation from a carefree youth to a determined and courageous soldier. Reviewing the film in 2016, Tatsam Mukherjee of "India Today" described his performance as career-best, highlighting his scene before the climax.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan was not seen on screen again until 2006, with three new releases, including a cameo at the end of the year in the romance "I See You". He co-starred with Naseeruddin Shah and Priyanka Chopra in his father's superhero production "Krrish". A follow-up to his family's production "Koi... Mil Gaya", it saw him play dual roles—the title superhero and his character from the original film. Before production, Roshan travelled to China to train with Tony Ching for the cable work that would be needed to make his character fly. Among the several injuries he sustained during production, Roshan tore the hamstring in his right leg and broke his thumb and toe. "Krrish" became the third-highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2006 with a worldwide revenue of . It garnered him Best Actor awards at the 2007 Screen and the International Indian Film Academy Awards. Ronnie Scheib of "Variety" considered Roshan a prime asset of the film, noting that he "pulls off the pic's wilder absurdities with considerable panache."


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: For his role as an enigmatic master thief in "Dhoom 2" (2006)—an action sequel co-starring Aishwarya Rai, Bipasha Basu and Abhishek Bachchan—Roshan won his third Filmfare Award for Best Actor. The film critic Rajeev Masand called him "the heart, the soul, and the spirit of the film", and praised his stunts, concluding that he "holds the film together and even manages to take your attention away from its many flaws". Bored by playing the "good guy", Roshan was excited to play an anti-hero who lacks heroic attributes, for the first time. At the request of the film's producer Aditya Chopra, Roshan lost for the role; he also learnt skateboarding, snow boarding, rollerblading and sand surfing. With earnings of , "Dhoom 2" became the highest grossing Indian film at that time, a distinction that was held for two years. In the 2007 melodrama "Om Shanti Om", he made a cameo alongside several Bollywood stars.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: In 2008, Roshan was cast in Ashutosh Gowariker's "Jodhaa Akbar", a partly fictionalised account of a marriage of convenience between the Mughal emperor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar (played by Roshan) and the Rajput princess Jodha Bai (played by Rai). Gowariker believed Roshan possessed the regal bearing and physique required to play the role of a king. For the role, Roshan learned sword-fighting and horse-riding, and also took Urdu lessons. "Jodhaa Akbar" earned worldwide. Roshan's performance earned him his fourth Filmfare Best Actor Award. Critics were generally appreciative of Roshan's performance. Raja Sen of Rediff.com thought that Roshan "proves a very good Akbar. There are times when his inflection seems too modern, but the actor gives the performance his all, slipping into the skin of the character and staying there." Roshan ended 2008 with an appearance in the popular item number "Krazzy 4" from the film of same name.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Following a small role in Zoya Akhtar's "Luck by Chance" in 2009, Roshan starred in and recorded "Kites in the Sky" for the multi-national romantic thriller "Kites" (2010). In the film, produced by his father, he played a man running a green card scam in Las Vegas in which he has married 11 different women in exchange for money. "Kites" opened on a record-breaking 3000 screens, and became the first Bollywood film to break into the North American top 10. However, the film eventually underperformed at India's box office and received negative reviews from critics. The website Box Office India attributed this failure to its multilingual dialogues. In a review for Rediff.com, Matthew Schneeberger thought that Roshan "overacts. A lot. In "Kites", he nails a few scenes, but bungles many more, particularly the film's catastrophically bad ending."


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan then collaborated with director Sanjay Leela Bhansali on the drama "Guzaarish" (2010) in which he had the role of Ethan Mascarenhas, a former magician suffering from quadriplegia, who after years of struggle, files an appeal for euthanasia. Roshan had reservations about the role but agreed to the project after reading the film's story. To understand his role better, he interacted with paraplegic patients. In his own words, "I used to spend six hours with the patients, initially once a week and then once a month. I used to go to understand what they go through, what they think, what their needs are. They have taught me a lot of things." He also trained with a Ukrainian magician to perform the film's magic stunts, and put on weight to look the part. The film failed at the box office, though it and Roshan's performance were positively received by critics. A writer for Zee News praised the chemistry between Roshan and Rai, adding that they "break the Bollywood mould of stereotypes." Roshan received the Zee Cine Award for Best Actor (Critics) and nominations for Filmfare, IIFA and Zee Cine Award for Best Actor.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: In 2011, Roshan appeared in Zoya Akhtar's ensemble comedy-drama "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara" alongside Abhay Deol and Farhan Akhtar as three friends who embark on a bachelor trip where they overcome their insecurities. Zoya cast Roshan in the role of an uptight workaholic as she considers him her favourite actor. For the film's soundtrack, Roshan recorded the song "Señorita" with his co-stars and María del Mar Fernández. "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara" was released to positive reviews and Roshan's performance was praised. Rajeev Masand wrote, "Hrithik Roshan once again brings real depth to his character with a spectacular performance. He's shy and restrained, then lets go with such fantastic intensity that you make the inward journey with his character." The film grossed worldwide and became Roshan's first commercial success in three years. Later that year, he made a special appearance in Farhan's "Don 2".


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan's only screen appearance in 2012 was in Karan Malhotra's "Agneepath", a retelling of the 1990 film of the same name. Cast alongside Rishi Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt and Priyanka Chopra, Roshan reinterpreted the character Vijay Deenanath Chauhan (originally played by Amitabh Bachchan), a common man who seeks revenge against an unscrupulous man for framing and murdering his father. Roshan was initially sceptical of taking up a role earlier played by Bachchan, and thought hard before accepting. He did not watch the original film for inspiration as he found his role to be completely different. In one of several accidents to happen during production, Roshan suffered a painful back injury. He deemed "Agneepath" "the hardest [project] I've ever worked in my life" owing to the exhaustion he felt while filming. The film broke Bollywood's highest opening-day earnings record, and had a worldwide gross of . A "Firstpost" reviewer thought Roshan "breathes fire and soul into "Agneepath"". The actor received a third consecutive Stardust Award for Best Actor in a Drama, having won previously for "Guzaarish" and "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara".


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan appeared in the third instalment of the "Krrish" film series—"Krrish 3" (2013) which also starred Priyanka Chopra, Vivek Oberoi and Kangana Ranaut. During production, Roshan was injured when he fell down, which resulted in back pain. Critics thought that the film was entertaining but lacking in originality, though Roshan's performance garnered praise. The editor Komal Nahta lauded Roshan for playing three different characters in the film. "Krrish 3" grossed worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing Indian films of all time. Roshan received a fourth and fifth consecutive Filmfare nomination for his performances in "Krrish 3", and the 2014 action comedy "Bang Bang!", a remake of the 2010 Hollywood release "Knight and Day" and one of the most expensive Bollywood films. Playing the role of an eccentric secret agent who plots to track down a terrorist, Roshan became the first actor to perform a flyboarding stunt in film. While filming in Thailand, Roshan suffered a head injury from a stunt accident and underwent brain surgery at the Hinduja Hospital performed by Dr. B. K. Misra to relieve subacute-subdural hematoma. Writing for Bollywood news website Koimoi, critic Mohar Basu noted that Roshan was "pitch perfect" and "breez[ed] through his part brilliantly." The film earned in global ticket sales, making it among the highest-grossing Indian films.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: For playing the role of a farmer in 2016 BC who travels to Mohenjo-daro in Ashutosh Gowariker's "Mohenjo Daro" (2016), Roshan was paid , a record-breaking remuneration for an Indian actor. He underwent a three-month training to achieve the "lithe" and "agile" physique required for his role. Despite being a highly anticipated release, it failed commercially, and critics were generally unenthusiastic. Dismissing the film as an "unintentional comedy", Anupama Chopra wrote that Roshan "pours his soul into every scene. But the burden of carrying this leaden, cartoon-like narrative proves too much even for his Herculean shoulders." Roshan was next seen alongside Yami Gautam in Sanjay Gupta's "Kaabil" (2017), a romantic thriller about a blind man who avenges the rape of his blind wife. To ensure authenticity in his portrayal, Roshan locked himself in a room for four days and avoided contact with people. Reviews for the film were generally positive with particular praise for Roshan's performance. Meena Iyer of "The Times of India" found his performance to be his best to date, and Shubhra Gupta on "The Indian Express" considered him "the only bright spot in this dispirited mess of a movie." The film accumulated worldwide.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: After two years of screen absence, Roshan starred in two films in 2019, first in Vikas Bahl's biographical film "Super 30", based on the mathematician Anand Kumar and his eponymous educational program. For the role, Roshan hired a trainer from Bhagalpur to learn Bihari accent. The film was released to mixed reviews but was a commercial success, grossing worldwide. While NDTV's Saibal Chatterjee found Roshan miscast in his role, Michael Gomes of "Khaleej Times" called it one of his best performances. Roshan found his biggest commercial success in the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2019, the -earning action thriller "War". The film, Roshan's first with Yash Raj Films since "Dhoom 2", tells the story of an Indian soldier (Tiger Shroff) tasked with eliminating his former mentor (Roshan) who has gone rogue. Reviews for the film and the performances were positive; Rajeev Masand praised Roshan and Shroff for their commitment to the action, "bringing swag to the big stylish sequences and a visceral energy to the one-on-one punch-ups in the movie".


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan's next release was three years later in "Vikram Vedha" (2022), a remake of the Tamil film of the same name. The film tells the story of Vikram, a police inspector (Saif Ali Khan) who sets out to track down and kill Vedha (Roshan), a gangster. It received positive reviews from critics. Rachana Dubey of "The Times of India" praised Roshan's performance, writing that he "is menacing, ruthless and extremely emotional in parts". Roshan will star in Siddharth Anand's action film "Fighter" (2024), with Deepika Padukone and Anil Kapoor.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan has performed on stage, appeared on television, and launched a clothing line. His first tour (Heartthrobs: Live in Concert (2002) with Kareena Kapoor, Karisma Kapoor, Arjun Rampal and Aftab Shivdasani) was successful in the United States and Canada. At the end of that year, he danced on stage with Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Kareena Kapoor, Rani Mukerji and Shah Rukh Khan at Kings Park Stadium in Durban, South Africa in the show "Now or Never". In 2011, Roshan served as a judge alongside Farah Khan and Vaibhavi Merchant for the dance competition reality show, "Just Dance". He became the highest-paid film star on Indian television after he was paid per episode. The show ran from June to October 2011. In November 2013, Roshan launched his clothing line, the casual wear brand HRx.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan is vocal about his childhood stammer. He actively supports the Dilkhush Special School for mentally challenged children in Mumbai. In 2008, he donated to the Nanavati Hospital for the treatment of stammering children. Roshan set up a charity foundation in 2009 that aims to work for handicapped people. He donates roughly for charity every month, and believes that people should publicise their philanthropic work to set an example for others. In 2013, he took part in a festivity at Ghatkopar, whose proceeds went to an NGO supporting tribal girls suffering from malnutrition and starvation. Also that year, he donated to help the victims of the 2013 North India floods.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Alongside other Bollywood stars, Roshan played a football match for charity organised by Aamir Khan's daughter, Ira, in 2014. The following year, he appeared with Sonam Kapoor in the music video for "Dheere Dheere", whose profits were donated to charity. Later that year, Roshan became the Indian brand ambassador for UNICEF and the Global Goals campaign's World's Largest Lesson that aims to educate children in over 100 countries about the Sustainable Development Goals. In 2016, Roshan and other Bollywood actors made donations for building homes for families affected by the 2015 South Indian floods.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Following his debut film, Roshan signed on for endorsement deals with Coca-Cola, Tamarind and Hero Honda, all for three years and for at least . As of 2010, he is celebrity endorser for such brands and products as Provogue, Parle Hide and Seek, Reliance Communications and Hero Honda and recently roshan has completed six years with Rado. "The Times of India" reported that Roshan received to for each endorsement, making him one of the highest-paid male celebrity endorsers. In 2016, Duff & Phelps estimated his brand value to be US$34.1 million, the eighth highest of Indian celebrities. In 2017, Roshan was signed as the brand ambassador of a Health and wellness startup Cure.fit and is touted as one of the largest endorsement deal signed by an Indian startup.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: On 20 December 2000, Roshan married Sussanne Khan in a private ceremony in Bangalore. Despite their religious difference—Roshan is a Hindu and Khan is a Muslim—Roshan says that he equally valued her beliefs. The couple has two sons, Hrehaan (born in 2006) and Hridhaan (born in 2008). They separated in December 2013 and their divorce was finalised in November 2014.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan and Sussanne maintained that they parted amicably. In 2016, he filed a lawsuit against his "Krrish 3" co-star Kangana Ranaut, accusing her of cyber stalking and harassment. Denying the charges, Ranaut filed a counter-charge against Roshan, claiming that his lawsuit was an attempt to cover up their affair. Owing to a lack of evidence, the Mumbai Police closed the case later that year.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan considered quitting the film industry after two assailants fired bullets at his father in 2000. Later that December, he was involved in a controversy when Nepalese newspapers accused him of stating in a Star Plus interview that he hated Nepal and its people. This led to protests in the country, a ban on screening of his films, and four people's deaths after street violence. Nepalese people threatened to "bury [him] alive" if he ever visited the country. Star Plus, for its part, stated that Roshan "did not touch upon Nepal." The violence calmed down after Roshan wrote a two-page rejoinder in which he denied having made any claim against the country. Nepali actress Manisha Koirala helped distribute it to newspapers and a local television station.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: As the son of the filmmaker Rakesh, Roshan faced the media spotlight from a young age. Discussing nepotism in Bollywood, Shama Rana views him as one of several actors who managed film careers with the help of family relations in the industry. On the other hand, Roshan is acknowledged in the media for his devotion to his work and for his ability to commit heavily to each role. He insists on learning any necessary skills and performing stunts himself, and is particularly known for his professionalism. The director Ashutosh Gowariker praised Roshan when he continued filming "Mohenjo Daro" despite several injuries and being in a troubled state of mind. Zoya Akhtar, who considers Roshan her favourite actor, and directed him in "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara", remarks on his ability to display a range of emotions on screen.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: In an attempt to avoid typecasting, Roshan takes on diverse parts. He looks at the scripts as a platform to inspire with the strength and courage of his characters and to make his audiences smile. Roshan was noted by critics for his versatility in portraying a variety of characters in "Koi... Mil Gaya" (2003), "Lakshya" (2004), "Jodhaa Akbar" (2008), and "Guzaarish" (2010). Box Office India ranked him first on its top actors listing in 2000 and later included him in 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007. Roshan topped Rediff.com's list of best Bollywood actors in 2003, and was ranked fourth in 2006. "Filmfare" magazine included two of his performances—from "Koi... Mil Gaya" and "Lakshya"—on its 2010 list of 80 Iconic Performances. In March 2011, Roshan placed fourth on Rediff.com's list of Top 10 Actors of 2000–2010. Roshan's dancing ability has also drawn praise from the media, an opinion he disagrees with. The "Los Angeles Times" finds him to be "a sensational dancer" who "has the dashing, chiseled looks of a silent movie matinee idol." Some critics also believe that he is only able to dance and act in his father's films. His inclination towards "glamorous, albeit empty parts", which conform to character stereotypes, has been criticised.


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan is among Bollywood's highest-paid actors. Discussing his success ratio at the box office in a 2014 article, "Daily News and Analysis" credited him as "the most bankable star" in Bollywood. One of the most high-profile Indian celebrities, he was named the second most powerful Indian film star by "Forbes" in 2001. He ranked fourth in "Filmfare" Power List in 2007. In a 2009 poll conducted by "Daily News and Analysis" Roshan was voted one of India's most popular icons. At the 2009 FICCI-IIFA Awards, Roshan was one of the ten recipients of the most powerful Bollywood entertainers of the 2000s. From 2012 to 2018, Roshan was placed on "Forbes India" Celebrity 100—a list based on the income and popularity of Indian celebrities—peaking at ninth position in 2014 with an annual income of .


title: Hrithik Roshan

text: Roshan has established himself as a sex symbol and a style icon in India. In 2006, Roshan was one of the four Bollywood actors, along with Priyanka Chopra, Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan, whose miniature dolls were launched in the United Kingdom, under the name of "Bollywood Legends". He topped "The Times of India" listing of 50 Most Desirable Men in 2010 and ranked among the top five for the next five years. In 2010 and 2012, the Indian edition of "GQ" included him in their listing of Bollywood's best dressed men. A life-size, wax figure of him was installed at London's Madame Tussauds museum in January 2011, making him the fifth Indian actor to have been replicated as a wax statue there. Versions of the statue were installed at Madame Tussauds' museums in New York, Washington and other cities in the world. Roshan regularly features in the magazine "Eastern Eye" listing of the 50 Sexiest Asian Men. He topped the list in 2011, 2012 and 2014, and featured among the top five in 2010, 2013 and 2015 to 2018.


title: David Lynch

text: David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Best Foreign Film twice, as well as the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival. In 2007, a panel of critics convened by "The Guardian" announced that "after all the discussion, no one could fault the conclusion that David Lynch is the most important film-maker of the current era", while AllMovie called him "the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking". His work led to him being labeled "the first populist surrealist" by film critic Pauline Kael.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch studied painting before he began making short films in the late 1960s. His first feature-length film, the surrealist "Eraserhead" (1977), became a success on the midnight movie circuit, and he followed that by directing "The Elephant Man" (1980), "Dune" (1984), and "Blue Velvet" (1986). Lynch next created his own television series with Mark Frost, the murder mystery "Twin Peaks" (1990–91), which initially ran for two seasons. He also made the film prequel "" (1992) and the road film "Wild at Heart" (1990) in the same period. Turning further towards surrealist filmmaking, three of his subsequent films operated on dream logic non-linear narrative structures: "Lost Highway" (1997), "Mulholland Drive" (2001), and "Inland Empire" (2006). Lynch and Frost reunited in 2017 for the third season of "Twin Peaks", which aired on Showtime. Lynch co-wrote and directed every episode, and reprised his onscreen role as Gordon Cole.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch's other artistic endeavors include his work as a musician, encompassing the studio albums "BlueBOB" (2001), "Crazy Clown Time" (2011), and "The Big Dream" (2013), as well as music and sound design for a variety of his films (sometimes alongside collaborators Alan Splet, Dean Hurley, and/or Angelo Badalamenti); painting and photography; writing the books "Images" (1994), "Catching the Big Fish" (2006), "Room to Dream" (2018), and numerous other literary works; and directing several music videos (such as the video for "Shot in the Back of the Head" by Moby, who, in turn, directed a video for Lynch's "The Big Dream") as well as advertisements, including the Dior promotional film "Lady Blue Shanghai" (2010).


title: David Lynch

text: A practitioner of Transcendental Meditation (TM), in 2005 he founded the David Lynch Foundation, which seeks to fund the teaching of TM in schools and has since widened its scope to other at-risk populations, including the homeless, veterans, and refugees.


title: David Lynch

text: David Keith Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana on January 20, 1946. His father, Donald Walton Lynch (1915–2007), was a research scientist working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and his mother, Edwina "Sunny" Lynch (née Sundberg; 1919–2004), was an English language tutor. Two of Lynch's maternal great-grandparents were Finnish-Swedish immigrants who arrived in the U.S. during the 19th century. He was raised as a Presbyterian. The Lynches often moved around according to where the USDA assigned Donald. Because of this, Lynch moved with his parents to Sandpoint, Idaho when he was two months old; two years later, after his brother John was born, the family moved to Spokane, Washington. Lynch's sister Martha was born there. The family then moved to Durham, North Carolina, Boise, Idaho, and Alexandria, Virginia. Lynch adjusted to this transitory early life with relative ease, noting that he usually had no issue making new friends whenever he started attending a new school. Of his early life, he remarked:


title: David Lynch

text: Alongside his schooling, Lynch joined the Boy Scouts, although he later said he only "became [a Scout] so I could quit and put it behind me". He rose to the highest rank of Eagle Scout. As an Eagle Scout, he was present with other Boy Scouts outside the White House at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, which took place on Lynch's 15th birthday. Lynch was also interested in painting and drawing from an early age, and became intrigued by the idea of pursuing it as a career path when living in Virginia, where his friend's father was a professional painter.


title: David Lynch

text: At Francis C. Hammond High School in Alexandria, Lynch did not excel academically, having little interest in schoolwork, but he was popular with other students, and after leaving he decided that he wanted to study painting at college. He began his studies at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., before transferring in 1964 to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he was roommates with musician Peter Wolf. He left after only a year, saying, "I was not inspired AT ALL in that place." He instead decided that he wanted to travel around Europe for three years with his friend Jack Fisk, who was similarly unhappy with his studies at Cooper Union. They had some hopes that they could train in Europe with Austrian expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka at his school. Upon reaching Salzburg, however, they found that Kokoschka was not available; disillusioned, they returned to the United States after spending only two weeks in Europe.


title: David Lynch

text: Back in the United States, Lynch returned to Virginia, but since his parents had moved to Walnut Creek, California, he stayed with his friend Toby Keeler for a while. He decided to move to Philadelphia and enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, after advice from Fisk, who was already enrolled there. He preferred this college to his previous school in Boston, saying, "In Philadelphia there were great and serious painters, and everybody was inspiring one another and it was a beautiful time there." It was here that he began a relationship with a fellow student, Peggy Reavey, whom he married in 1967. The following year, Peggy gave birth to their daughter Jennifer. Peggy later said, "[Lynch] definitely was a reluctant father, but a very loving one. Hey, I was pregnant when we got married. We were both reluctant." As a family, they moved to Philadelphia's Fairmount neighborhood, where they bought a 12-room house for the relatively low price of $3,500 due to the area's high crime and poverty rates. Lynch later said:


title: David Lynch

text: Meanwhile, to help support his family, he took a job printing engravings. At the Pennsylvania Academy, Lynch made his first short film, "Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)" (1967). He had first come up with the idea when he developed a wish to see his paintings move, and he began discussing doing animation with an artist named Bruce Samuelson. When this project never came about, Lynch decided to work on a film alone, and purchased the cheapest 16mm camera that he could find. Taking one of the academy's abandoned upper rooms as a workspace, he spent $150, which at the time he felt to be a lot of money, to produce "Six Men Getting Sick". Calling the film "57 seconds of growth and fire, and three seconds of vomit", Lynch played it on a loop at the academy's annual end-of-year exhibit, where it shared joint first prize with a painting by Noel Mahaffey. This led to a commission from one of his fellow students, the wealthy H. Barton Wasserman, who offered him $1,000 to create a film installation in his home. Spending $478 of that on the second-hand Bolex camera "of [his] dreams", Lynch produced a new animated short, but upon getting the film developed, realized that the result was a blurred, frameless print. He later said, "So I called up [Wasserman] and said, 'Bart, the film is a disaster. The camera was broken and what I've done hasn't turned out.' And he said, 'Don't worry, David, take the rest of the money and make something else for me. Just give me a print.' End of story."


title: David Lynch

text: With his leftover money, Lynch decided to experiment with a mix of animation and live action, producing the four-minute short "The Alphabet" (1968). The film starred Lynch's wife Peggy as a character known as The Girl, who chants the alphabet to a series of images of horses before dying at the end by hemorrhaging blood all over her bed sheets. Adding a sound effect, Lynch used a broken Uher tape recorder to record the sound of Jennifer crying, creating a distorted sound that Lynch found particularly effective. Later describing what had inspired him, Lynch said, "Peggy's niece was having a bad dream one night and was saying the alphabet in her sleep in a tormented way. So that's sort of what started "The Alphabet" going. The rest of it was just subconscious."


title: David Lynch

text: Learning about the newly founded American Film Institute, which gave grants to filmmakers who could support their application with a prior work and a script for a new project, Lynch decided to send them a copy of "The Alphabet" along with a script he had written for a new short film that would be almost entirely live action, "The Grandmother". The institute agreed to help finance the work, initially offering him $5,000 out of his requested budget of $7,200, but later granting him the additional $2,200. Starring people he knew from both work and college and filmed in his own house, "The Grandmother" featured a neglected boy who "grows" a grandmother from a seed to care for him. The film critics Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell wrote, "this film is a true oddity but contains many of the themes and ideas that would filter into his later work, and shows a remarkable grasp of the medium".


title: David Lynch

text: In 1971, Lynch moved with his wife and daughter to Los Angeles, where he began studying filmmaking at the AFI Conservatory, a place he later called "completely chaotic and disorganized, which was great ... you quickly learned that if you were going to get something done, you would have to do it yourself. They wanted to let people do their thing." He began writing a script for a proposed work, "Gardenback", that had "unfolded from this painting I'd done". In this venture he was supported by a number of figures at the Conservatory, who encouraged him to lengthen the script and add more dialogue, which he reluctantly agreed to do. All the interference on his "Gardenback" project made him fed up with the Conservatory and led him to quit after returning to start his second year and being put in first-year classes. AFI dean Frank Daniel asked Lynch to reconsider, believing that he was one of the school's best students. Lynch agreed on the condition that he could create a project that would not be interfered with. Feeling that "Gardenback" was "wrecked", he set out on a new film, "Eraserhead".


title: David Lynch

text: "Eraserhead" was planned to be about 42 minutes long (it ended up being 89 minutes), its script was only 21 pages, and Lynch was able to create the film without interference. Filming began on May 29, 1972, at night in some abandoned stables, allowing the production team, which was largely Lynch and some of his friends, including Sissy Spacek, Jack Fisk, cinematographer Frederick Elmes and sound designer Alan Splet, to set up a camera room, green room, editing room, sets as well as a food room and a bathroom. The AFI gave Lynch a $10,000 grant, but it was not enough to complete the film, and under pressure from studios after the success of the relatively cheap feature film "Easy Rider", it was unable to give him more. Lynch was then supported by a loan from his father and money that he earned from a paper route that he took up, delivering "The Wall Street Journal". Not long into "Eraserhead"'s production, Lynch and Peggy amicably separated and divorced, and he began living full-time on set. In 1977, Lynch married Mary Fisk, sister of Jack Fisk.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch has said that not a single reviewer of the film understood it in the way he intended. Filmed in black and white, "Eraserhead" tells the story of Henry (Jack Nance), a quiet young man living in a dystopian industrial wasteland, whose girlfriend gives birth to a deformed baby whom she leaves in his care. It was heavily influenced by the fearful mood of Philadelphia, and Lynch has called it "my "Philadelphia Story"".


title: David Lynch

text: Due to financial problems the filming of "Eraserhead" was haphazard, regularly stopping and starting again. It was in one such break in 1974 that Lynch created the short film "The Amputee", a one-shot film about two minutes long. Lynch proposed that he make "The Amputee" to present to AFI to test two different types of film stock.


title: David Lynch

text: "Eraserhead" was finally finished in 1976. Lynch tried to get it entered into the Cannes Film Festival, but while some reviewers liked it, others felt it was awful, and it was not selected for screening. Reviewers from the New York Film Festival also rejected it, but it was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival, where Ben Barenholtz, the distributor of the Elgin Theater, heard about it. He was very supportive of the movie, helping to distribute it around the United States in 1977, and "Eraserhead" subsequently became popular on the midnight movie underground circuit, and was later called one of the most important midnight movies of the 1970s, along with "El Topo", "Pink Flamingos", "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", "The Harder They Come" and "Night of the Living Dead". Stanley Kubrick said it was one of his all-time favorite films.


title: David Lynch

text: After "Eraserhead"'s success on the underground circuit, Stuart Cornfeld, an executive producer for Mel Brooks, saw it and later said, "I was just 100 percent blown away ... I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. It was such a cleansing experience." He agreed to help Lynch with his next film, "Ronnie Rocket", for which Lynch had already written a script. But Lynch soon realized that "Ronnie Rocket", a film that he has said is about "electricity and a three-foot guy with red hair", was not going to be picked up by any financiers, and so he asked Cornfeld to find him a script by someone else that he could direct. Cornfeld found four. On hearing the title of the first, "The Elephant Man", Lynch chose it.


title: David Lynch

text: "The Elephant Man"'s script, written by Chris de Vore and Eric Bergren, was based on a true story, that of Joseph Merrick, a severely deformed man in Victorian London, who was held in a sideshow but later taken under the care of a London surgeon, Frederick Treves. Lynch wanted to make some alterations that would alter the story from true events but in his view make a better plot, but he needed Mel Brooks's permission, as Brooks's company, Brooksfilms, was responsible for production. Brooks viewed "Eraserhead", and after coming out of the screening theatre, embraced Lynch, declaring, "You're a madman! I love you! You're in."


title: David Lynch

text: "The Elephant Man" starred John Hurt as John Merrick (the name changed from Joseph) and Anthony Hopkins as Treves. Filming took place in London. Though surrealistic and in black and white, it has been called "one of the most conventional" of Lynch's films. "The Elephant Man" was a huge critical and commercial success, earning eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.


title: David Lynch

text: After "The Elephant Man"'s success, George Lucas, a fan of "Eraserhead", offered Lynch the opportunity to direct the third film in his "Star Wars" trilogy, "Return of the Jedi". Lynch refused, arguing that Lucas should direct the film himself as the movie should reflect his own vision, not Lynch's. Soon, the opportunity to direct another big-budget science fiction epic arose when Dino de Laurentiis of the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group asked Lynch to create a film adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel "Dune" (1965). Lynch agreed, and in doing so was also contractually obliged to produce two other works for the company. He set about writing a script based upon the novel, initially with both Chris de Vore and Eric Bergren, and then alone when De Laurentiis was unhappy with their ideas. Lynch also helped build some of the sets, attempting to create "a certain look", and particularly enjoyed building the set for the oil planet Giedi Prime, for which he used "steel, bolts, and porcelain".


title: David Lynch

text: "Dune" is set in the far future, when humans live in an interstellar empire under a feudal system. The main character, Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan), is the son of a noble who takes control of the desert planet Arrakis, which grows the rare spice melange, the empire's most highly prized commodity. Lynch was unhappy with the work, later saying, ""Dune" was a kind of studio film. I didn't have final cut. And, little by little, I was subconsciously making compromises" [to his own vision]. Much of his footage was eventually removed from the final theatrical cut, dramatically condensing the plot. Although De Laurentiis hoped it would be as successful as "Star Wars", "Dune" (1984) was a critical and commercial dud; it had cost $45 million to make, and grossed $27.4 million domestically. Later, Universal Studios released an "extended cut" for syndicated television, containing almost an hour of cutting-room-floor footage and new narration. It did not represent Lynch's intentions, but the studio considered it more comprehensible than the original version. Lynch objected to the changes and had his name struck from the extended cut, which has Alan Smithee credited as the director and "Judas Booth" (a pseudonym Lynch invented, reflecting his feelings of betrayal) as the screenwriter.


title: David Lynch

text: Meanwhile, in 1983, he had begun the writing and drawing of a comic strip, "The Angriest Dog in the World", which featured unchanging graphics of a tethered dog that was so angry that it could not move, alongside cryptic philosophical references. It ran from 1983 to 1992 in the "Village Voice," "Creative Loafing" and other tabloid and alternative publications. Around this time Lynch also became interested in photography as an art form, and traveled to northern England to photograph the degrading industrial landscape.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch was contractually still obliged to produce two other projects for De Laurentiis, the first a planned sequel to "Dune", which due to the film's failure never went beyond the script stage. The other was a more personal work, based on a script Lynch had been working on for some time. Developing from ideas that Lynch had had since 1973, the film, "Blue Velvet", was set in the real town of Lumberton, North Carolina, and revolves around a college student, Jeffrey Beaumont (MacLachlan), who finds a severed ear in a field. Investigating further with the help of friend Sandy (Laura Dern), he discovers that it is related to a criminal gang led by psychopath Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who has kidnapped the husband and child of singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and repeatedly rapes her. Lynch has called the story "a dream of strange desires wrapped inside a mystery story".


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch included pop songs from the 1960s in the film, including Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" and Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet", the latter of which largely inspired the film. Lynch has said, "It was the song that sparked the movie ... There was something mysterious about it. It made me think about things. And the first things I thought about were lawns—lawns and the neighborhood. Other music for the film was composed by Angelo Badalamenti, who wrote the music for most of Lynch's subsequent work. De Laurentiis loved the film, and it received support at some of the early specialist screenings, but the preview screenings to mainstream audiences were very negatively received, with most of the viewers hating the film. Lynch had found success with "The Elephant Man", but "Blue Velvet"s controversy with audiences and critics introduced him into the mainstream, and it became a huge critical and moderate commercial success. The film earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Woody Allen, whose "Hannah and Her Sisters" was nominated for Best Picture, said "Blue Velvet" was his favorite film of the year. In the late 1980s, Lynch began to work in television, directing a short piece, "The Cowboy and the Frenchman", for French television in 1989.


title: David Lynch

text: Around this time, he met the television producer Mark Frost, who had worked on such projects as "Hill Street Blues", and they decided to start working together on a biopic of Marilyn Monroe based on Anthony Summers's book "The Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe", but it never got off the ground. They went on to work on a comedy script, "One Saliva Bubble", but that did not see completion either. While talking in a coffee shop, Lynch and Frost had the idea of a corpse washing up on a lakeshore, and went to work on their third project, initially called "Northwest Passage" but eventually "Twin Peaks" (1990–91). A drama series set in a small Washington town where popular high school student Laura Palmer has been murdered, "Twin Peaks" featured FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) as the investigator trying to identify the killer, and discovering not only the murder's supernatural aspects but also many of the townsfolk's secrets; Lynch said, "The project was to mix a police investigation with the ordinary lives of the characters." He later said, "[Mark Frost and I] worked together, especially in the initial stages. Later on we started working more apart." They pitched the series to ABC, which agreed to finance the pilot and eventually commissioned a season comprising seven episodes.


title: David Lynch

text: During season one Lynch directed two of the seven episodes, devoting more time to his film "Wild at Heart", but carefully chose the other episodes' directors. He also appeared in several episodes as FBI agent Gordon Cole. The series was a success, with high ratings in the United States and many other countries, and soon spawned a cult following. Soon a second season of 22 episodes went into production, but ABC executives believed that public interest in the show was decreasing. The network insisted that Lynch and Frost reveal Laura Palmer's killer's identity prematurely, which Lynch grudgingly agreed to do, in what Lynch has called one of his biggest professional regrets. After identifying the murderer and moving from Thursday to Saturday night, "Twin Peaks" continued for several more episodes, but was canceled after a ratings drop. Lynch, who disliked the direction that writers and directors took in the later episodes, directed the final episode. He ended it with a cliffhanger (like season one had), later saying, "that's not the ending. That's the ending that people were stuck with."


title: David Lynch

text: Also while "Twin Peaks" was in production, the Brooklyn Academy of Music asked Lynch and Badalamenti, who wrote the music for "Twin Peaks", to create a theatrical piece to be performed twice in 1989 as a part of the New Music America Festival. The result was "Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted", which starred frequent Lynch collaborators such as Laura Dern, Nicolas Cage and Michael J. Anderson, and contained five songs sung by Julee Cruise. Lynch produced a 50-minute video of the performance in 1990. Meanwhile, he was also involved in creating various commercials for companies including Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani and the Japanese coffee company Namoi, which featured a Japanese man searching Twin Peaks for his missing wife.


title: David Lynch

text: While Lynch was working on the first few episodes of "Twin Peaks", his friend Monty Montgomery "gave me a book that he wanted to direct as a movie. He asked if I would maybe be executive producer or something, and I said 'That's great, Monty, but what if I read it and fall in love with it and want to do it myself?' And he said, 'In that case, you can do it yourself'." The book was Barry Gifford's novel "Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula", about two lovers on a road trip. Lynch felt that it was "just exactly the right thing at the right time. The book and the violence in America merged in my mind and many different things happened." With Gifford's support, Lynch adapted the novel into "Wild at Heart", a crime and road movie starring Nicolas Cage as Sailor and Laura Dern as Lula. Describing its plot as a "strange blend" of "a road picture, a love story, a psychological drama and a violent comedy", Lynch altered much of the original novel, changing the ending and incorporating numerous references to "The Wizard of Oz". Despite a muted response from American critics and viewers, "Wild at Heart" won the Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.


title: David Lynch

text: After "Wild at Heart"'s success, Lynch returned to the world of the canceled "Twin Peaks", this time without Frost, to create a film that was primarily a prequel but also in part a sequel. Lynch said, "I liked the idea of the story going back and forth in time." The result, "" (1992), primarily revolved around the last few days in the life of Laura Palmer, and was much "darker" in tone than the TV series, with much of the humor removed, and dealing with such topics as incest and murder. Lynch has said the film is about "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest". The company CIBY-2000 financed "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me", and most of the TV series' cast reprised their roles, though some refused and many were unenthusiastic about the project. The film was a commercial failure in the United States at the time of its release, but it has since experienced a critical reappraisal. A number of critics, such as Mark Kermode, have called it Lynch's "masterpiece".


title: David Lynch

text: Meanwhile, Lynch worked on some new television shows. He and Frost created the comedy series "On the Air" (1992), which was canceled after three episodes aired, and he and Monty Montgomery created the three-episode HBO miniseries "Hotel Room" (1993) about events that happen in one hotel room on different dates.


title: David Lynch

text: In 1993, Lynch collaborated with Japanese musician Yoshiki on the video for X Japan's song "Longing ~Setsubou no Yoru~". The video was never officially released, but Lynch claimed in his 2018 memoir "Room to Dream" that "some of the frames are so fuckin' beautiful, you can't believe it."


title: David Lynch

text: After his unsuccessful TV ventures, Lynch returned to film. In 1997, he released the non-linear noiresque "Lost Highway", which was co-written by Barry Gifford and starred Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette. The film failed commercially and received a mixed response from critics.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch then began work on a film from a script by Mary Sweeney and John E. Roach, "The Straight Story", based on a true story: that of Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), an elderly man from Laurens, Iowa, who goes on a 300-mile journey to visit his sick brother (Harry Dean Stanton) in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, by riding lawnmower. Asked why he chose this script, Lynch said, "that's what I fell in love with next", and expressed his admiration of Straight, describing him as "like James Dean, except he's old". Badalamenti wrote the music for the film, saying it was "very different from the kind of score he's done for [Lynch] in the past".


title: David Lynch

text: Among the many differences from Lynch's other films, "The Straight Story" contains no profanity, sexuality or violence, and is rated G (general viewing) by the Motion Picture Association of America, which came as "shocking news" to many in the film industry, who were surprised that it "did not disturb, offend or mystify". Le Blanc and Odell write that the plot made it "seem as far removed from Lynch's earlier works as could be imagined, but in fact right from the very opening, this is entirely his film—a surreal road movie".


title: David Lynch

text: The same year, Lynch approached ABC again with ideas for a television drama. The network gave Lynch the go-ahead to shoot a two-hour pilot for the series "Mulholland Drive", but disputes over content and running time led to the project being shelved indefinitely. But with $7 million from the French production company StudioCanal, Lynch completed the pilot as a film, "Mulholland Drive". The film, a non-linear narrative surrealist tale of Hollywood's dark side, stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux. It performed relatively well at the box office worldwide and was a critical success, earning Lynch Best Director at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival (shared with Joel Coen for "The Man Who Wasn't There") and Best Director from the New York Film Critics Association. He also received his third Academy Award nomination for Best Director. In 2016, the film was named the best film of the 21st century in a BBC poll of 177 film critics from 36 countries.


title: David Lynch

text: With the rising popularity of the Internet, Lynch decided to use it as a distribution channel, releasing several new series he had created exclusively on his website, davidlynch.com, which went online on December 10, 2001. In 2002, he created a series of online shorts, "DumbLand". Intentionally crude in content and execution, the eight-episode series was later released on DVD. The same year, Lynch released a surreal sitcom, "Rabbits", about a family of humanoid rabbits. Later, he made his experiments with Digital Video available in the form of the Japanese-style horror short "Darkened Room". In 2006, Lynch's feature film "Inland Empire" was released. At three hours, it is the longest of his films. Like "Mulholland Drive" and "Lost Highway", it does not follow a traditional narrative structure. It stars Lynch regulars Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton and Justin Theroux, with cameos by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring as the voices of Suzie and Jane Rabbit, and a performance by Jeremy Irons. Lynch has called "Inland Empire" "a mystery about a woman in trouble". In an effort to promote it, he made appearances with a cow and a placard bearing the slogan "Without cheese there would be no "Inland Empire"".


title: David Lynch

text: In 2009, Lynch produced a documentary web series directed by his son Austin Lynch and friend Jason S., "Interview Project". Interested in working with Werner Herzog, in 2009 Lynch collaborated on Herzog's film "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?". With a nonstandard narrative, the film is based on a true story of an actor who committed matricide while acting in a production of the Oresteia, and starred Lynch regular Grace Zabriskie. In 2009, Lynch had plans to direct a documentary on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi consisting of interviews with people who knew him, but nothing has come of it.


title: David Lynch

text: In 2010, Lynch began making guest appearances on the "Family Guy" spin-off "The Cleveland Show" as Gus the Bartender. He had been convinced to appear in the show by its lead actor, Mike Henry, a fan of Lynch who felt that his whole life had changed after seeing "Wild at Heart". "Lady Blue Shanghai" is a 16-minute promotional film that was written, directed and edited by Lynch for Dior. It was released on the Internet in May 2010.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch directed a concert by English new wave band Duran Duran on March 23, 2011. The concert was streamed live on YouTube from the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the kickoff to the second season of "". "The idea is to try and create on the fly, layers of images permeating Duran Duran on the stage", Lynch said. "A world of experimentation and hopefully some happy accidents". The animated short "I Touch a Red Button Man", a collaboration between Lynch and the band Interpol, played in the background during Interpol's concert at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April 2011. The short, which features Interpol's song "Lights", was later made available online.


title: David Lynch

text: It was believed that Lynch was going to retire from the film industry; according to Abel Ferrara, Lynch "doesn't even want to make films any more. I've talked to him about it, OK? I can tell when he talks about it." But in a June 2012 "Los Angeles Times" interview, Lynch said he lacked the inspiration to start a new movie project, but "If I got an idea that I fell in love with, I'd go to work tomorrow". In September 2012, he appeared in the three-part "Late Show" arc on FX's "Louie" as Jack Dahl. In November 2012, Lynch hinted at plans for a new film while attending Plus Camerimage in Bydgoszcz, Poland, saying, "something is coming up. It will happen but I don't know exactly when". At Plus Camerimage, Lynch received a lifetime achievement award and the Key to the City from Bydgoszcz's mayor, Rafał Bruski. In a January 2013 interview with the "Los Angeles Times", Laura Dern confirmed that she and Lynch were planning a new project, and "The New York Times" later revealed that Lynch was working on the script. "Idem Paris", a short documentary film about the lithographic process, was released online in February 2013. On June 28, 2013, a video Lynch directed for the Nine Inch Nails song "Came Back Haunted" was released. He also did photography for the Dumb Numbers' self-titled album released in August 2013.


title: David Lynch

text: On October 6, 2014, Lynch confirmed via Twitter that he and Frost would start shooting a new, nine-episode season of "Twin Peaks" in 2015, with the episodes expected to air in 2016 on Showtime. Lynch and Frost wrote all the episodes. On April 5, 2015, Lynch announced via Twitter that the project was still alive, but he was no longer going to direct because the budget was too low for what he wanted to do. On May 15, 2015, he said via Twitter that he would return to the revival, having sorted out his issues with Showtime. Showtime CEO David Nevins confirmed this, announcing that Lynch would direct every episode of the revival and that the original nine episodes had been extended to 18. Filming was completed by April 2016. The two-episode premiere aired on May 21, 2017.


title: David Lynch

text: While doing press for "Twin Peaks", Lynch was again asked if he had retired from film and seemed to confirm that he had made his last feature film, responding, "Things changed a lot... So many films were not doing well at the box office even though they might have been great films and the things that were doing well at the box office weren't the things that I would want to do". Lynch later said that this statement had been misconstrued: "I did not say I quit cinema, simply that nobody knows what the future holds."


title: David Lynch

text: Since the last episode of "The Return" aired, there has been speculation about a fourth season. Lynch did not deny the possibility of another season, but said that if it were to happen, it would not air before 2021.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch did weather reports on his now-defunct website in the 2000s. He has returned to doing weather reports from his apartment in Los Angeles, along with two new series, "What is David Lynch Working on Today?", which details him making collages and "Today's Number Is...", where each day he picks a random number from 1 to 10 using a jar containing ten numbered ping-pong balls. In one of his weather reports, he detailed a dream he had about being a German soldier shot by an American soldier on D-Day. In June 2020, Lynch rereleased his 2002 web series "Rabbits" on YouTube. On July 17, 2020, his store for merchandise released a set of face masks with Lynch's art on them for the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2022, it was announced that Lynch had been cast in the Steven Spielberg film "The Fabelmans" in a role "Variety" called at the time "a closely guarded secret", later revealed to be that of real-life film director John Ford, whose famous encounter with Spielberg is dramatized in the film's final moments.


title: David Lynch

text: In 2021 it was announced that Lynch was working on a new project for Netflix under the working titles "Wisteria" and "Unrecorded Night". He was set to write and direct 13 episodes with an $85 million budget. Production was set to begin in May 2021 in Los Angeles.


title: David Lynch

text: In April 2022, "Variety" reported that Lynch had a film set to premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, possibly featuring Laura Dern and Naomi Watts. It was unclear whether this was related to the "Wisteria" project Lynch was linked to in 2021. Lynch denied the reports in an interview with "Entertainment Weekly" the next day, saying, "I have no new film coming out. That's a total rumor. So there you are. It is not happening. I don't have a project. I have nothing at Cannes."


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch has said his work is more similar to that of European filmmakers than American ones, and that most films that "get down and thrill your soul" are by European directors. He has expressed his admiration for Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, Jacques Tati, Stanley Kubrick, and Billy Wilder. He has said that Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" (1950) is one of his favorite pictures, as are Kubrick's "Lolita" (1962), Tati's "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday" (1953), Hitchcock's "Rear Window" (1954), and Herzog's "Stroszek" (1977). He has also cited Herk Harvey's "Carnival of Souls" (1962) and Jerzy Skolimowski's "Deep End" (1970) as influences on his work.


title: David Lynch

text: Several themes recur in Lynch's work. Le Blanc and Odell write, "his films are so packed with motifs, recurrent characters, images, compositions and techniques that you could view his entire output as one large jigsaw puzzle of ideas". One of the key themes they note is the usage of dreams and dreamlike imagery and structure, something they relate to the "surrealist ethos" of relying "on the subconscious to provide visual drive". This can be seen in Merrick's dream of his mother in "The Elephant Man", Cooper's dreams of the red room in "Twin Peaks" and the "dreamlike logic" of the narratives of "Eraserhead", "Mulholland Drive" and "Inland Empire". Of his attitude to dreams, Lynch has said, "Waking dreams are the ones that are important, the ones that come when I'm quietly sitting in a chair, letting my mind wander. When you sleep, you don't control your dream. I like to dive into a dream world that I've made or discovered; a world I choose ... [You can't really get others to experience it, but] right there is the power of cinema." His films are known for their use of magic realism. The motif of dreams is closely linked to his recurring use of drones, real-world sounds and musical styles.


title: David Lynch

text: Another of Lynch's prominent themes is industry, with repeated imagery of "the clunk of machinery, the power of pistons, shadows of oil drills pumping, screaming woodmills and smoke billowing factories", as seen in the industrial wasteland in "Eraserhead", the factories in "The Elephant Man", the sawmill in "Twin Peaks" and the lawnmower in "The Straight Story". Of his interest in such things, Lynch has said, "It makes me feel good to see giant machinery, you know, working: dealing with molten metal. And I like fire and smoke. And the sounds are so powerful. It's just big stuff. It means that things are being made, and I really like that."


title: David Lynch

text: Another theme is the dark underbelly of violent criminal activity in a society, such as Frank Booth's gang in "Blue Velvet" and the cocaine smugglers in "Twin Peaks". The idea of deformity is also found in several of Lynch's films, from "The Elephant Man" to the deformed baby in "Eraserhead", as well as death from head wounds, found in most of Lynch's films. Other imagery common in Lynch's works includes flickering electricity or lights, fire, and stages upon which a singer performs, often surrounded by drapery.


title: David Lynch

text: Except "The Elephant Man" and "Dune", which are set in Victorian London and a fictitious galaxy respectively, all of Lynch's films are set in the United States, and he has said, "I like certain things about America and it gives me ideas. When I go around and I see things, it sparks little stories, or little characters pop out, so it just feels right to me to, you know, make American films." A number of his works, including "Blue Velvet", "Twin Peaks" and "Lost Highway", are intentionally reminiscent of 1950s American culture despite being set in later decades of the 20th century. Lynch has said, "It was a fantastic decade in a lot of ways ... there was something in the air that is not there any more at all. It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright. Little did we know we were laying the groundwork for a disastrous future.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch also tends to feature his leading female actors in "split" roles, so that many of his female characters have multiple, fractured identities. This practice began with his casting Sheryl Lee as both Laura Palmer and her cousin Maddy Ferguson in "Twin Peaks" and continued in his later works. In "Lost Highway", Patricia Arquette plays the dual role of Renee Madison/Alice Wakefield; in "Mulholland Drive" Naomi Watts plays Diane Selwyn/Betty Elms and Laura Harring plays Camilla Rhodes/Rita; in "Inland Empire" Laura Dern plays Nikki Grace/Susan Blue. The numerous alternative versions of lead characters and fragmented timelines may echo and/or reference the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics and perhaps Lynch's broader interest in quantum mechanics. Some have suggested that Lynch's love for Hitchcock's "Vertigo", which employs a split lead character (the Judy Barton and Madeleine Elster characters, both portrayed by Kim Novak) may have influenced this aspect of his work.


title: David Lynch

text: His films frequently feature characters with supernatural or omnipotent qualities. They can be seen as physical manifestations of various concepts, such as hatred or fear. Examples include The Man Inside the Planet in "Eraserhead", BOB in "Twin Peaks", The Mystery Man in "Lost Highway", The Bum in "Mulholland Drive", and The Phantom in "Inland Empire". Lynch approaches his characters and plots in a way that steeps them in a dream state rather than reality.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch is also widely noted for his collaborations with various production artists and composers on his films and other productions. He frequently works with Angelo Badalamenti to compose music for his productions, former wife Mary Sweeney as a film editor, casting director Johanna Ray, and cast members Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Naomi Watts, Isabella Rossellini, Grace Zabriskie, and Laura Dern.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch first trained as a painter, and although he is now better known as a filmmaker, he has continued to paint. Lynch has stated that "all my paintings are organic, violent comedies. They have to be violently done and primitive and crude, and to achieve that I try to let nature paint more than I paint." Many of his works are very dark in color, and Lynch has said this is because


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch considers the 20th-century Irish-born British artist Francis Bacon to be his "number one kinda hero painter", stating that "Normally I only like a couple of years of a painter's work, but I like everything of Bacon's. The guy, you know, had the stuff."


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch was the subject of a major art retrospective at the Fondation Cartier, Paris from March 3 – May 27, 2007. The show was titled "The Air is on Fire" and included numerous paintings, photographs, drawings, alternative films and sound work. New site-specific art installations were created specially for the exhibition. A series of events accompanied the exhibition including live performances and concerts.


title: David Lynch

text: His alma mater, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, presented an exhibition of his work, entitled "The Unified Field", which opened on September 12, 2014, and ended in January 2015.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch is represented by Kayne Griffin Corcoran in Los Angeles, and has been exhibiting his paintings, drawings, and photography with the gallery since 2011.


title: David Lynch

text: His favorite photographers include William Eggleston ("The Red Ceiling"), Joel-Peter Witkin, and Diane Arbus.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch has also been involved in a number of music projects, many of them related to his films. His album genres switch mainly between experimental rock, ambient soundscapes and, most recently, avant-garde electropop music. Most notably he produced and wrote lyrics for Julee Cruise's first two albums, "Floating into the Night" (1989) and "The Voice of Love" (1993), in collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti who composed the music and also produced. Lynch also worked on the 1998 Jocelyn Montgomery album "Lux Vivens (Living Light), The Music of Hildegard von Bingen". For his own productions, he composed music for "Wild at Heart", "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me", "Mulholland Drive", and "Rabbits". In 2001, he released "BlueBob", a rock album performed by Lynch and John Neff. The album is notable for Lynch's unusual guitar playing style. He plays "upside down and backwards, like a lap guitar", and relies heavily on effects pedals. Most recently Lynch composed several pieces for "Inland Empire", including two songs, "Ghost of Love" and "Walkin' on the Sky", in which he makes his public debut as a singer. In 2009, his new book-CD set "" was released. In 2008, he started his own record label called David Lynch MC which first released "Fox Bat Strategy: A Tribute to Dave Jaurequi" in early 2009.


title: David Lynch

text: In November 2010, Lynch released two electropop music singles, "Good Day Today" and "I Know", through the independent British label Sunday Best Recordings. Describing why he created them, he stated that "I was just sitting and these notes came and then I went down and started working with Dean [Hurley, his engineer] and then these few notes, 'I want to have a good day, today' came and the song was built around that". The singles were followed by an album, "Crazy Clown Time", which was released in November 2011 and described as an "electronic blues album". The songs were sung by Lynch, with guest vocals on one track by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and composed and performed by Lynch and Dean Hurley. All or most of the songs for "Crazy Clown Time" were put into art-music videos, Lynch directing the title song's video.


title: David Lynch

text: On September 29, 2011, Lynch released "This Train" with vocalist and long-time musical collaborator Chrysta Bell on the La Rose Noire label. The 11-song album was produced by Lynch and co-written primarily by Lynch and Chrysta Bell. It includes the song "Polish Poem" which is featured on the "Inland Empire" soundtrack. The musical partnership also yielded a 5- song EP entitled "Somewhere in the Nowhere", released October 7, 2016, on Meta Hari Records.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch's third studio album, "The Big Dream", was released in 2013 and included the single "I'm Waiting Here", with Swedish singer-songwriter Lykke Li. "The Big Dream"s release was preceded by "TBD716", an enigmatic 43-second video featured on Lynch's YouTube and Vine accounts.


title: David Lynch

text: For Record Store Day 2014, David Lynch released "The Big Dream Remix EP" which featured four songs from his album remixed by various artists. This included the track "Are You Sure" remixed by Bastille. The band Bastille have been known to take inspiration from David Lynch's work for their songs and music videos, the main one being their song "Laura Palmer" which is influenced by Lynch's television show "Twin Peaks".


title: David Lynch

text: On November 2, 2018, a collaborative album by Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, titled "Thought Gang", was released on vinyl and on compact disc. The album was recorded around 1993 but was unreleased at the time. Two tracks from the album already appeared on the soundtrack from the 1992 movie 'Twin Peaks: Fire walk with me' and three other tracks were used for the 'Twin Peaks' TV series in 2017.


title: David Lynch

text: In May 2019, Lynch provided guest vocals on the track "Fire is Coming" by Flying Lotus. He also co-wrote the track that appears on Flying Lotus' album "Flamagra". A video accompanying the song was released on April 17, 2019.


title: David Lynch

text: In May 2021, Lynch produced a new track by Scottish artist Donovan titled "I Am the Shaman". The song was released on 10 May, Donovan's 75th birthday. Lynch also directed the accompanying video.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch designed and constructed furniture for his 1997 film "Lost Highway", notably the small table in the Madison house and the VCR case. In April 1997, he presented a furniture collection at the prestigious Milan Furniture Fair. "Design and music, art and architecture – they all belong together."


title: David Lynch

text: Working with designer Raphael Navot, architectural agency Enia and light designer Thierry Dreyfus, Lynch has conceived and designed a nightclub in Paris. "Silencio" opened in October 2011, and is a private members' club although is free to the public after midnight. Patrons have access to concerts, films and other performances by artists and guests. Inspired by the club of the same name in his 2001 film "Mulholland Drive", the underground space consists of a series of rooms, each dedicated to a certain purpose or atmosphere. "Silencio is something dear to me. I wanted to create an intimate space where all the arts could come together. There won't be a Warhol-like guru, but it will be open to celebrated artists of all disciplines to come here to programme or create what they want."


title: David Lynch

text: In 2006, Lynch authored a short book describing his creative processes, stories from throughout his career, and the benefits he had realized through his practice of Transcendental Meditation called "Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity". He describes the metaphor behind the title in the introduction:


title: David Lynch

text: The book weaves a non-linear autobiography with descriptions of Lynch's cognitive experiences during Transcendental Meditation.


title: David Lynch

text: Working with Kristine McKenna, Lynch published a biography-memoir hybrid, "Room to Dream", in June 2018.


title: David Lynch

text: In 2017, Lynch was awarded The Edward MacDowell Medal by The MacDowell Colony for outstanding contributions to American culture.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch has had several long-term relationships. In January 1968, he married Peggy Reavey, with whom he had one child, Jennifer Lynch, born in 1968, who is a film director. They filed for divorce in 1974. In June 1977, Lynch married Mary Fisk, and the couple had one child, Austin Jack Lynch, born in 1982. They divorced in 1987. Lynch later developed a relationship with Mary Sweeney, with whom he had one son, Riley Sweeney Lynch, born in 1992. Sweeney also worked as Lynch's longtime film editor/producer and co-wrote and produced "The Straight Story". The two married in May 2006, but filed for divorce that June. In 2009, Lynch married actress Emily Stofle, who appeared in his 2006 film "Inland Empire" as well as the . The couple have one child, Lula Boginia Lynch, born in 2012.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch has said that he is "not a political person" and that he knows little about politics. In the 1990s, he expressed admiration for former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, saying, "I mostly liked that he carried a wind of old Hollywood, of a cowboy." Describing his political philosophy in 2006, he stated, "at that time, I thought of myself as a libertarian. I believed in next to zero government. And I still would lean toward no government and not so many rules, except for traffic lights and things like this. I really believe in traffic regulations." Lynch continued to state that "I'm a Democrat now. And I've always been a Democrat, really. But I don't like the Democrats a lot, either, because I'm a smoker, and I think a lot of the Democrats have come up with these rules for non-smoking." He endorsed the center-left Natural Law Party in the 2000 presidential election and later stated that he would vote for Democratic incumbent Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.


title: David Lynch

text: In 2009, Lynch signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski after Polanski's arrest on his 1977 sexual abuse charges. Polanski had been detained while traveling to a film festival. The petition argued the arrest would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely", and that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects."


title: David Lynch

text: In the 2016 United States presidential election, he endorsed Bernie Sanders, whom he described as "for the people." He voted for Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Primary and for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in the general election. In a June 2018 interview with "The Guardian", he stated that Donald Trump could go down as "one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the [country] so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way." He added: "Our so-called leaders can't take the country forward, can't get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this." The interviewer clarified that "while Trump may not be doing a good job himself, Lynch thinks, he is opening up a space where other outsiders might." At a rally later that month Trump read out sections from the interview claiming Lynch as a supporter (though he misspoke, saying, "David Lynch could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history"). Lynch later clarified on Facebook that the quote was taken out of context, saying that Trump would "not have a chance to go down in history as a great president" if he continued on the course of "causing suffering and division", advising him to "treat all the people as you would like to be treated".


title: David Lynch

text: In one of his daily weather report videos, Lynch expressed support for Black Lives Matter protests. In another such video, Lynch condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and addressed Russian president Vladimir Putin directly, telling him there was "no room for this kind of absurdity anymore" and that Putin would reap what he had sown, lifetime after lifetime.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch advocates Transcendental Meditation as a spiritual practice. He was initiated into Transcendental Meditation in July 1973, and has practiced the technique consistently since then. Lynch says he met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the TM movement, for the first time in 1975 at the Spiritual Regeneration Movement center in Los Angeles, California. He became close with the Maharishi during a month-long "Millionaire's Enlightenment Course" held in 2003, the fee for which was $1 million.


title: David Lynch

text: In July 2005, Lynch launched the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and Peace, established to help finance scholarships for students in middle and high schools who are interested in learning Transcendental Meditation and to fund research on the technique and its effects on learning. Together with John Hagelin and Fred Travis, a brain researcher from Maharishi University of Management (MUM), Lynch promoted his vision on college campuses with a tour that began in September 2005. Lynch is on MUM's board of trustees and has hosted an annual "David Lynch Weekend for World Peace and Meditation" there since 2005.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch was working for the building and establishment of seven buildings in which 8,000 salaried people would practice advanced meditation techniques, "pumping peace for the world". He estimates the cost at US$7 billion. As of December 2005, he had spent $400,000 of his money and raised $1 million in donations. In December 2006, "The New York Times" reported that he continued to have that goal. Lynch's book "Catching the Big Fish" (Tarcher/Penguin 2006) discusses Transcendental Meditation's effect on his creative process. Lynch attended the funeral of the Maharishi in India in 2008. He told a reporter, "In life, he revolutionized the lives of millions of people. ... In 20, 50, 500 years there will be millions of people who will know and understand what the Maharishi has done." In 2009, Lynch went to India to film interviews with people who knew the Maharishi as part of a biographical documentary.


title: David Lynch

text: In 2009, Lynch organized a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall for the David Lynch Foundation. On April 4, 2009, the "Change Begins Within" concert featured Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Donovan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Moby, Bettye LaVette, Ben Harper, and Mike Love of the Beach Boys. "David Wants to Fly", released in May 2010, is a documentary by German filmmaker David Sieveking "that follows the path of his professional idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation (TM)". At the end of the film, Sieveking becomes disillusioned with Lynch.


title: David Lynch

text: An independent project starring Lynch called "Beyond The Noise: My Transcendental Meditation Journey", directed by film student Dana Farley, who has severe dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, was shown at film festivals in 2011, including the Marbella Film Festival. Filmmaker Kevin Sean Michaels is one of the producers. In 2013, Lynch wrote: "Transcendental Meditation leads to a beautiful, peaceful revolution. A change from suffering and negativity to happiness and a life more and more free of any problems."


title: David Lynch

text: In a 2019 interview of Lynch by British artist Alexander de Cadenet, Lynch said of TM, "Here's an experience that utilizes the full brain. That's what it's for. It's for enlightenment, for higher states of consciousness, culminating in the highest state of unity consciousness." In April 2022, Lynch announced a $500 million transcendental meditation world peace initiative to fund transcendental meditation for 30,000 college students.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch designed his personal website, a site exclusive to paying members, where he posts short videos and his absurdist series "Dumbland", plus interviews and other items. The site also featured a daily weather report, where Lynch gives a brief description of the weather in Los Angeles, where he resides. He continues to broadcast this weather report (usually no longer than 30 seconds) on his personal YouTube channel, "DAVID LYNCH THEATER", along with "TODAY'S NUMBER", where he draws a random number, between one and ten, out of a bingo cage. Lynch also created a short film, "Rabbits", for his website. Absurd ringtone ("I like to kill deer") from the website was a common sound bite on "The Howard Stern Show" in early 2006.


title: David Lynch

text: Lynch is a coffee drinker and has his own line of special organic blends available for purchase on his website and at Whole Foods. Called "David Lynch Signature Cup", the coffee has been advertised via flyers included with several recent Lynch-related DVD releases, including "Inland Empire" and the Gold Box edition of "Twin Peaks". The brand's tagline is "It's all in the beans ... and I'm just full of beans." This is also a line said by Justin Theroux's character in "Inland Empire".


title: David Lynch

text: The moving image collection of David Lynch is held at the Academy Film Archive, which has preserved two of his student films.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the process of internal disintegration within the Soviet Union (USSR) which resulted in the end of the country's and its federal government's existence as a sovereign state, thereby resulting in its constituent republics gaining full sovereignty on 26 December 1991. It brought an end to General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's (later also President) effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to stop a period of political stalemate and economic backslide. The Soviet Union had experienced internal stagnation and ethnic separatism. Although highly centralized until its final years, the country was made up of fifteen top-level republics that served as homelands for different ethnicities. By late 1991, amid a catastrophic political crisis, with several republics already departing the Union and the waning of centralized power, the leaders of three of its founding members declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed. Eight more republics joined their declaration shortly thereafter. Gorbachev resigned in December 1991 and what was left of the Soviet parliament voted to end itself.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: The process began with growing unrest in the Union's various constituent national republics developing into an incessant political and legislative conflict between them and the central government. Estonia was the first Soviet republic to declare state sovereignty inside the Union on 16 November 1988. Lithuania was the first republic to declare full independence restored from the Soviet Union by the Act of 11 March 1990 with its Baltic neighbours and the Southern Caucasus republic of Georgia joining it in a course of two months.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: In August 1991, communist hardliners and military elites tried to overthrow Gorbachev and stop the failing reforms in a coup, but failed. The turmoil led to the government in Moscow losing most of its influence, and many republics proclaiming independence in the following days and months. The secession of the Baltic states was recognized in September 1991. The Belovezh Accords were signed on 8 December by President Boris Yeltsin of Russia, President Kravchuk of Ukraine, and Chairman Shushkevich of Belarus, recognising each other's independence and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to replace the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last republic to leave the Union, proclaiming independence on 16 December. All the ex-Soviet republics, with the exception of Georgia and the Baltic states, joined the CIS on 21 December, signing the Alma-Ata Protocol. On 25 December, Gorbachev resigned and turned over his presidential powers—including control of the nuclear launch codes—to Yeltsin, who was now the first president of the Russian Federation. That evening, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin and replaced with the Russian tricolour flag. The following day, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR's upper chamber, the Soviet of the Republics formally dissolved the Union.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: In the aftermath of the Cold War, several of the former Soviet republics have retained close links with Russia and formed multilateral organizations such as the CIS, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and the Union State, for economic and military cooperation. On the other hand, the Baltic states and most of the former Warsaw Pact states became part of the European Union and joined NATO, while some of the other former Soviet republics like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have been publicly expressing interest in following the same path since the 1990s.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on 11 March 1985, just over four hours after his predecessor Konstantin Chernenko died at the age of 73. Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the stagnating Soviet economy, and he realized that doing so would require reforming underlying political and social structures. The reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On 23 April 1985, Gorbachev brought two protégés, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the "power" ministries favorable by promoting KGB Chief Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and appointing Minister of Defence Marshal Sergei Sokolov as a Politburo candidate.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: That liberalization, however, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union. It also led indirectly to the revolutions of 1989 in which Soviet-imposed socialist regimes of the Warsaw Pact were toppled peacefully (with the notable exception of Romania), which in turn increased pressure on Gorbachev to introduce greater democracy and autonomy for the Soviet Union's constituent republics. Under Gorbachev's leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, the Congress of People's Deputies (although the ban on other political parties was not lifted until 1990).


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: On 1 July 1985, Gorbachev sidelined his main rival by removing Grigory Romanov from the Politburo and brought Boris Yeltsin into the Central Committee Secretariat. On 23 December 1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: Gorbachev continued to press for greater liberalisation. On 23 December 1986, the most prominent Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov, returned to Moscow shortly after receiving a personal telephone call from Gorbachev telling him that after almost seven years his internal exile for defying the authorities was over.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: At the 28–30 January 1987, Central Committee plenum, Gorbachev suggested a new policy of "demokratizatsiya" throughout Soviet society. He proposed that future Communist Party elections should offer a choice between multiple candidates, elected by secret ballot. However, the party delegates at the Plenum watered down Gorbachev's proposal, and democratic choice within the Communist Party was never significantly implemented.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: Gorbachev also radically expanded the scope of "glasnost" and stated that no subject was off limits for open discussion in the media.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: On 7 February 1987, dozens of political prisoners were freed in the first group release since the Khrushchev Thaw in the mid-1950s.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: On 10 September 1987, Boris Yeltsin wrote a letter of resignation to Gorbachev. At the 27 October 1987, plenary meeting of the Central Committee, Yeltsin, frustrated that Gorbachev had not addressed any of the issues outlined in his resignation letter, criticized the slow pace of reform and servility to the general secretary. In his reply, Gorbachev accused Yeltsin of "political immaturity" and "absolute irresponsibility". Nevertheless, news of Yeltsin's insubordination and "secret speech" spread, and soon "samizdat" versions began to circulate. That marked the beginning of Yeltsin's rebranding as a rebel and rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure. The following four years of political struggle between Yeltsin and Gorbachev played a large role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 11 November 1987, Yeltsin was fired from the post of First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: In the years leading up to the dissolution, various protests and resistance movements occurred or took hold throughout the Soviet Union, which were variously suppressed or tolerated.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: The CTAG () Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town of Liepāja. Helsinki-86 was the first openly anti-Communist organization in the U.S.S.R., and the first openly organized opposition to the Soviet regime, setting an example for other ethnic minorities' pro-independence movements.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: On 26 December 1986, 300 Latvian youths gathered in Riga's Cathedral Square and marched down Lenin Avenue toward the Freedom Monument, shouting, "Soviet Russia out! Free Latvia!" Security forces confronted the marchers, and several police vehicles were overturned.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: The "Jeltoqsan" ('December') of 1986 were riots in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, sparked by Gorbachev's dismissal of Dinmukhamed Kunaev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan and an ethnic Kazakh, who was replaced with Gennady Kolbin, an outsider from the Russian SFSR. Demonstrations started in the morning of 17 December 1986, with 200 to 300 students in front of the Central Committee building on Brezhnev Square. On the next day, 18 December, protests turned into civil unrest as clashes between troops, volunteers, militia units, and Kazakh students turned into a wide-scale confrontation. The clashes could only be controlled on the third day.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: On 6 May 1987, Pamyat, a Russian nationalist group, held an unsanctioned demonstration in Moscow. The authorities did not break up the demonstration and even kept traffic out of the demonstrators' way while they marched to an impromptu meeting with Boris Yeltsin.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: On 25 July 1987, 300 Crimean Tatars staged a noisy demonstration near the Kremlin Wall for several hours, calling for the right to return to their homeland, from which they were deported in 1944; police and soldiers looked on.


title: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

text: On 23 August 1987, the 48th anniversary of the secret protocols of the 1939 Molotov Pact, thousands of demonstrators marked the occasion in the three Baltic capitals to sing independence songs and attend speeches commemorating Stalin's victims. The gatherings were sharply denounced in the official press and closely watched by the police but were not interrupted.