David Lee Hess was born and raised 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 features, short films, and web series, as well as episodes of Minx, Lessons in Chemistry, Baskets, Fear the Walking Dead, Dallas, and NBC's Revolution. In 2017 he wrote, directed, and starred in an award-winning short film, Fetish, which is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.