David Lynch’s cause of death has been revealed nearly a month after he died at the age of 78.
The acclaimed Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks director, who in 2020 was diagnosed with emphysema, passed away on January 16.
On Friday, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health published his death certificate, which lists his immediate cause of death as cardiac arrest due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Dehydration is also listed as a significant contributor to his death.
Lynch’s death was announced by his family in a Facebook post, which read: “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’”
In the days before his death, the Oscar-nominated auteur had reportedly been evacuated from his L.A. home due to the city’s devastating wildfires.
According to Deadline, sources said that the move had prompted a decline in his health.
In an interview with Sight & Sound magazine last year, Lynch revealed he had been diagnosed with emphysema due to smoking throughout his life, and said he could not “go out” because of the risk of catching Covid.
“I’ve gotten emphysema from smoking for so long and so I’m homebound whether I like it or not. It would be very bad for me to get sick, even with a cold,” he said, admitting that he could only walk a short distance before he was “out of oxygen.”
Lynch, who frequently collaborated with Hollywood luminaries such as Laura Dern, Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, Naomi Watts, Jack Nance and Harry Dean Stanton, left behind an iconic body of work.
He earned critical acclaim and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director for the biographical drama The Elephant Man (1980), the mystery thriller Blue Velvet (1986), and the psychological drama Mulholland Drive (2001).
Following his death, he was honored by several colleagues, including Steven Spielberg, who called him “a singular, visionary dreamer.”
Watts, who co-led Mulholland Drive and starred in his 2006 mystery Inland Empire, shared a heartwarming tribute on Instagram.
“My heart is broken. My Buddy Dave… The world will not be the same without him,” she wrote. “His creative mentorship was truly powerful. He put me on the map. The world I’d been trying to break into for 10-plus years, flunking auditions left and right.”
Adding that Lynch “seemed to live in an altered world, one that I feel beyond lucky to have been a small part of,” she revealed she was “in pieces” over his death.
In a tribute for The Independent, Louis Chilton mourned: “How do you articulate such a loss – to cinema, to art, to the world? It feels like we cannot.
“... Words are inadequate when it comes to David Lynch. But people will keep talking about him nonetheless, for as long as cinema survives.”
Lynch is survived by his four children, Boxing Helena director Jennifer Lynch, Austin Jack Lynch, Riley Lynch, and Lula Lynch.
