David Lynch has died.The passing of the brilliant director behind such classics asBlue Velvet,Eraserhead, andTwin Peakswas announced by his family on Lynchs own Facebook page.It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch, they wrote. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. Theres a big hole in the world now that hes no longer with us. But, as he would say, Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.They added Its a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way, in tribute to Lynchs popular weather reports, which he delivered on local L.A. radio and then online for many years. Lynch was 78 years old.READ MORE: The Best Movies of the 21st CenturyThe iconoclastic artist, director, and musician was born in Montana in 1946. He studied art at the Corcoran School in Washington D.C., the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, before moving to Los Angelesto study filmmaking at the American Film Institute. It was there that Lynch began work on his first feature,Eraserhead, a moody, black and white horror film about a man in a nightmarish industrial world caring for a bizarre-looking baby. (Until the end of his life, Lynch never revealed exactly how he made the films disturbing looking baby.)Eraserheadbecame one of the first America filmsto become a cult hit playing in urban theaters as a midnight movie. (The picture of its title character, played by Jack Nance, adorns the cover of the most famous book on that subject,Midnight Movies by J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum.) Lynchs bold work on Eraserheadcaught the attention of Mel Brooks, who brought Lynch on to directThe Elephant Man,which became his first Hollywood production.The success ofThe Elephant Man, which earned Lynchhis first Oscar nomination for Best Director, helped Lynch land the job directing the much-anticipated first adaptation of Frank HerbertsDune.(Along the way, Lynch also turned down the opportunity to directReturn of the Jedi.)Dunewas not well-received at the time and it was a box-office disappointment, butit has become more and more of a cult favorite in recent years.Lynch rebounded fromDunewith one of his signature projects:Blue Velvet, a neo-noir set in a small town where a naive young man (Kyle Maclachlan, who previously worked with Lynch onDune) uncovers a mystery and falls deeper and deeper into the local underworld, where he encounters thederanged Frank Booth, played by Dennis Hopper.Equally controversial and influential,Blue Velvetis now considered one of the greatest movies of the 1980s. And Lynch followed it with maybe his biggest mainstream success ever: The TV seriesTwin Peaks, which channeled many of Blue Velvetssame themes about the darkness lurking beneath the surface of small-town America into the form of a high schoolTV soap opera.The first season ofTwin Peaks became a smash, although mainstream audiences began to lose interest in the series during its second season, after ABC moved the show to Saturday nights and forcing Lynch and the creative team to reveal the answer to the shows biggest mystery, the identity of the murderer of Laura Palmer.AlthoughTwin Peaks ended after its second season, Lynch returned repeatedly to the material, first in a prequel film, 1992sTwin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and then in a revival show,Twin Peaks: The Return, which expanded the mythology of the show in myriad ways across 18 fascinatingly strange episodes on Showtime in 2017.Lynchs other movies includeWild at Heart,Lost Highway,The Straight Story, and possiblythe most acclaimed film of his entire career,Mulholland Drive.Thatproject began life as a pilot for an ABC series, but after the network rejected it, Lynch retooled the concept, shot new material, and turned it into a feature about an actress (Naomi Watts) who moves to Los Angelesandmeets an amnesiac (Laura Harring).Lynchs cinematic output slowed in the 21st century; he made just one feature afterMulholland Drive, 2006sInland Empire, along with the massiveTwin Peaks: The Return.But he continued creating all sorts of things in his later years. In addition to those famous weather reports,Lynch made music, directed music videos, wrote books, andchampioned Transcendental Meditation, which he practiced for many years.Last summer, Lynch revealed in an interview that he had been diagnosed with emphysema after decades of smoking. The disease had left him essentially homebound, he said, and put an abrupt end to his directing career because he could only walk a short distance before he ran out of oxygen.He did say at that time that for the right project he would try to [direct] it remotely. Sadly, that never happened. But the movies and shows Lynch did make will be watched for decades to come.Get our free mobile app10 Wild Passion Projects from Famous Directors That Were Almost Never MadeIf it weren't for these directors' sheer determination, we might never have seen these movies at all.