David Lee Hess was born in Oklahoma. After working as a musician in Austin, Texas for twenty years, Hess was cast in his first feature film in 2012. Since then he's appeared in numerous feature-length and short films, as well as episodes of Monster, Minx, Lessons in Chemistry, Baskets, Fear the Walking Dead, Dallas, and Revolution. In 2017 Hess wrote, directed, and starred in an award-winning short film, Fetish, which streams on Amazon Prime.