Friedkin's mother was an operating room nurse. His father was a merchant seaman, semi-pro softball player and ultimately sold clothes in a men's discount chain. He never earned more than $50/week in his whole life and died indigent. Friedkin became infatuated with Orson Welles after seeing Citizen Kane. He went to work for WGN TV immediately after graduating from high school where he started making documentaries, one of which won the Golden Gate Award at the 1962 San Francisco film festival. In 1965, he moved to Hollywood and immediately started directing TV shows, including an episode of the The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Hitchcock chastised him for not wearing a tie.
The night he won his Academy Award for directing The French Connection, he was riding with his manager when their Rolls-Royce broke down several miles from the ceremony. They had to hitch a ride from a driver at a gas station in order to arrive in time. His video for Laura Branigan's song "self control" has never been shown in its entirety on MTV. Friedkin's uncut version features a brief shot of a female breast. Was going to work with Peter Gabriel on a film project. But Gabriel was caught up with work with his former band Genesis on the album "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway". The project was called off. He was believed to be the youngest person to win the Best Director Oscar, at age 32. Later, he was discovered to have actually been born in 1935, and was 36 at the time. The record returned to Norman Taurog. Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 372-375. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988. After The Exorcist he was planning on making a film about Aliens and Atlantis. But after Close Encounters of The Third Kind went into production he abandoned the film and made Sorcerer instead. While on his first directing assignment for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", was reprimanded by Hitchcock for not wearing a tie. In "Hollywood Animal: A Memoir," Joe Eszterhas claims that William Friedkin's wife Sherry Lansing, the boss of Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group, made him issue a statement that he supported Paramount's hiring of Friedkin as director for his "Jade" (1995) script. In truth, Eszterhas did not want the former Oscar-winner, whom he considered a washed-up has-been, to direct the picture, but deferred to Lansing's wishes. Began his career in the mail-room of WGN-TV in Chicago. Within two years, he was directing live television. In 1985, was sued for plagiarism by Michael Mann, who claimed that To Live and Die in L.A. stole the entire concept of Mann's TV series Miami Vice. Mann lost the lawsuit. He directed 5 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Jason Miller, Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair. Hackman won an Oscar for The French Connection. Does not like to work with storyboards. Was offered the chance to direct The Exorcist by producer William Peter Blatty after Blatty screened The French Connection. His studio, Warner Bros., had been pressuring him to use another director but after seeing the policier, Blatty decided he wanted the film of his novel to be infused with as much energy as Friedkin had brought to "The French Connection."