David Lynch Started Smoking at Age 8 — Now He Needs Oxygen to Walk: 'It's a Big Price to Pay' (Exclusive)

• Director David Lynch (78) was diagnosed with emphysema in 2020
• Lynch has smoked since he was 8, but quit two years ago and wants to warn others to quit
• Lynch is an acclaimed director of films such as Blue velvet and Mulholland Drive

Try Googling “David Lynch” and you’ll likely come across photo after photo of the Oscar-winning director with a cigarette in hand.

For most of Lynch’s life, this was exactly the image he wanted to portray. “A big important part of my life was smoking,” says Lynch, 78. “I loved the smell of tobacco, the taste of tobacco. I liked to light cigarettes. For me, it was part of painting and being a director.”

But, he admits, “you reap what you sow.” four years ago, Mulholland Drive the director was diagnosed with emphysema, a chronic lung condition that causes shortness of breath and is a type of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.

David Lynch on the set of the 2001 film Mulholland Drive with Naomi Watts.

Universal/Everett

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Today, he relies on supplemental oxygen for anything more strenuous than walking across the room – and wants to warn other smokers that the same could happen to them.

“In the back of every smoker’s mind is the fact that it’s healthy, so you’re literally playing with fire,” he says. “It can bite you. I took a risk and bit.”

Lynch’s habit was almost literally lifelong. A Montana native whose father was a forestry scientist for the Department of Agriculture, Lynch grew up in rural Idaho and Washington and started smoking at age 8.

Around the time Lynch released his first indie film, Nightmare Rubber head In 1977, smoking was part of his imagined artistic persona. And cigarettes were an indelible part of his film oeuvre. Since 1986 Blue velvet his groundbreaking TV series from the 90s Twin Peaks and its 2017 revival, smoking was intertwined with Lynch’s characters and his dreamlike cinematography.

Sherilyn Fenn and Kyle MacLachlan in David Lynch’s 90s cult classic ‘Twin Peaks’.

Everett

Over the years, Lynch tried to quit “many, many times, but when the going got tough, I’d have my first cigarette, and it was a one-way road to heaven,” he’s quoted here. “Then you went back to smoking again.”

In 2020, Lynch was diagnosed with emphysema, but even that alarming news wasn’t enough to stop him. It took two more years before he finally gave up.

“I saw the writing on the wall. and it said, ‘You’ll be dead in a week if you don’t stop,'” says Lynch, who has four children, including 12-year-old daughter Lulu (he’s currently in the middle of a divorce). by his fourth wife, Emily Stofle). “I could barely move without gasping for air. Giving up was my only choice.”

He says his longtime Transcendental Meditation practice helped him quit (he meditates twice a day every day and has started a foundation dedicated to the practice) and keeps him optimistic. “I have a positive attitude focused on the body’s self-healing,” says Lynch. But, he admits, “it’s hard to live with emphysema. I can barely walk across the room. It’s like walking around with a plastic bag around your head.”

The disease, which makes him more vulnerable to other respiratory illnesses, keeps him mostly housebound. “I’ve never really liked going out before, so it’s a nice excuse,” he jokes.

And it also stopped him from doing one of his favorite things: “I love being on set,” he says. “I love being there, being able to whisper to people.” But he’s also willing to try remote directing in the future.

Lynch on the set of ‘Blue Velvet’ with Laura Dern in 1986.

De Laurentiis/Everett Group

David Lynch, 78, ‘housebound’ after emphysema diagnosis, says he would have to direct films ‘remotely’

Although the consequences of smoking were “a big price,” Lynch says, “I don’t regret it. It was important to me. I want what every addict wants: for what we love to be good for us.”

And he insists that he wouldn’t change a thing about incorporating cigarettes into his work so often. “I never thought of it as glamorizing it,” he says. “It was part of life. Some characters would be smokers, just like in real life.”

But he says he hopes his own experience will be something of a moral tale for other smokers. “I really wanted to convey this: think about it. You can stop doing those things that will eventually kill you,” he says. “I owe it to them – and to myself – to say that.”

COPD: The Facts

• COPD includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis and is a progressive, incurable disease
• More than 11 million people live with COPD in the US
• Smokers are seven times more likely to develop COPD than never smokers
• COPD sufferers have a higher risk of pneumonia and flu complications

Source: American Lung Association

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Source: HIS Education