[2] It was in high school he took the stage name of David Lander, which he would later legally adopt, after a classmate "borrowed" his real name to register with an actors' union.

[1] He was best known for his role as Andrew Helmut "Squiggy" Squiggman on the situation comedy Laverne & Shirley from 1976 to 1982 along with sitcom sidekick Lenny, played by Michael McKean.

[1] Lander's partnership with McKean began during their acting classes at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, where they developed the characters of Lenny and Squiggy.

His other film roles included the part of a minor league baseball radio announcer in the film A League of Their Own (directed by his Laverne & Shirley co-star Penny Marshall) and a bit part of the minister officiating the marriage ceremony in Say It Isn't So.

Lander created the starring role of the demented fast-food franchise clown Bruce Burger in the cult film Funland, directed by Michael A. Simpson.

Later voice roles included The Big Bang, A Bug's Life, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, Oswald, Titan A.E., Tom and Jerry: The Movie and the animated TV series Galaxy High as the six-armed Milo de Venus.

Lander was the voice of Smart Ass, the chief weasel of Judge Doom's Toon Patrol in the 1988 Disney film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

In 2002, his autobiography was published, titled Fall Down Laughing: How Squiggy Caught Multiple Sclerosis and Didn't Tell Nobody (ISBN 1-58542-052-2), written with Lee Montgomery.