William Friedkin

Has cited the babadook(2014) as the scariest movie he's ever seen.

Profiled in "Conversations with Directors: An Anthology of Interviews from Literature/Film Quarterly", E.M. Walker, D.T. Johnson, eds. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008.

In 1997 it was announced that "The Ripper Diaries", a film he was scheduled to direct with Anthony Hopkins (I) starring, had been put on hold.

Joe Eszterhas, in "Hollywood Animal: A Memoir," claims that Friedkin's wife Sherry Lansing, the boss of Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group, made Eszterhas 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 he deferred to Lansing's wishes.

He had once been considered by fellow filmmaker Michael Mann for the original role of Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter (1986).

In 1985 he was sued for plagiarism by Michael Mann, who claimed that To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) stole the entire concept of Mann's TV series Miami Vice (1984). Mann lost the lawsuit.

After The Exorcist--The Version You've Never Seen Before (1973) he was planning on making a film about aliens and Atlantis. However, after Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) went into production, he abandoned the film and made Sorcerer (1977) instead.

With the death of Mike Nichols, Friedkin is the earliest surviving Best Director Oscar winner. Everyone who won before 1972 has passed on. (2018).

The night he won his Academy Award for directing The French Connection (1971), 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.

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.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 372-375. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

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. Ultimately, his father never earned more than $50/week in his whole life and died indigent. Eventually young Will became infatuated with Orson Welles after seeing Citizen Kane (1941).

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.