Oscar-winning film director William Friedkin, whose career included hits such as The French Connection and The Exorcist, has died aged 87.
Friedkin, who won the best director Academy Award for The French Connection, died on Monday in Los Angeles.
Among those paying tribute was actor Elijah Wood who said Friedkin was “a true cinematic master”.
Aww man…a true cinematic master whose influence will continue to extend forever. So long, William Friedkin pic.twitter.com/sXppoS0FVK
— Elijah Wood (@elijahwood) August 7, 2023
Crime thriller The French Connection was based on a true story and starred Gene Hackman as maverick New York City police detective James Popeye Doyle, who tries to track down Frenchman Fernando masterminding a large drug pipeline funnelling heroin into the United States.
The movie also won Academy Awards for best picture, screenplay and film editing and led critics to hail Friedkin, then just 32, as a leading member of a new generation of filmmakers who would dominate Hollywood.
He followed with an even bigger blockbuster, The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty’s best-selling novel about a 12-year-old girl possessed by the devil.
The harrowing scenes of the girl’s possession and a cast including Linda Blair as the girl, Ellen Burstyn as her mother and Max Von Sydow and Jason Miller as the priests who try to exorcise the devil from her, helped make the film a box office sensation.
The film was so terrifying that some cinemagoers fled before it was over while others said they were unable to sleep for days afterward.
It received 10 Oscar nominations, including one for Friedkin as director, and won two, for Blatty’s script and for sound.
With that second success, Friedkin would go on to direct movies and TV shows well into the 21st century, but he would never again come close to matching the success of his earlier works.
Other film credits included To Live and Die in LA, Cruising, Rules of Engagement and a TV remake of the classic play and Sidney Lumet movie 12 Angry Men.
Friedkin also directed episodes for TV shows such as The Twilight Zone, Rebel Highway and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
