[14] Among the movies that he also saw as a teenager and young adult were Les Diaboliques, The Wages of Fear (which many consider he remade as Sorcerer), and Psycho (which he viewed repeatedly, like Citizen Kane).

[20] In 1965, Friedkin moved to Hollywood and two years later released his first feature film, Good Times starring Sonny and Cher.

Shot in a gritty style more suited for documentaries than Hollywood features, the film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Following these two pictures, Friedkin, along with Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich, was deemed one of the premier directors of New Hollywood.

Whereas Coppola directed The Conversation and Bogdanovich, the Henry James adaptation, Daisy Miller, Friedkin abruptly left the company, which was soon closed by Paramount.

[25] In 1980, Friedkin directed an adaptation of the Gerald Walker crime thriller Cruising, starring Al Pacino, which was protested during production and remains the subject of heated debate.

[26] Friedkin had a heart attack on March 6, 1981, due to a genetic defect in his circumflex left coronary artery, and nearly died.

In 1985, Friedkin directed the music video for Barbra Streisand's rendition of the West Side Story song "Somewhere",[28] which she recorded for her twenty-fourth studio LP, The Broadway Album.

[29] The action/crime movie To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), starring William Petersen and Willem Dafoe, was a critical favorite and drew comparisons to Friedkin's own The French Connection (particularly for its car chase sequence), while his courtroom drama/thriller Rampage (1987) received a fairly positive review from Roger Ebert.

[30] He next directed the cult classic horror film The Guardian (1990) and the thriller Jade (1995), starring Linda Fiorentino.

Later, Friedkin directed an episode of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled "Cockroaches", which re-teamed him with To Live and Die in L.A. star William Petersen.

It opened in U.S. theaters in July 2012, to some favorable reviews from critics but did poorly at the box office, possibly because of its restrictive NC-17 rating.

[36] In 2017, Friedkin directed the documentary The Devil and Father Amorth about the ninth exorcism of a woman in the Italian village of Alatri.

[37] In August 2022, it was announced officially that Friedkin would be returning to film directing to helm an adaptation of the two-act play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial with Kiefer Sutherland starring as Lt.

[54][55] Friedkin died from heart failure and pneumonia at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles on August 7, 2023.

[67] Friedkin had also been set to direct the premiere of an opera titled An Inconvenient Truth to debut in 2011,[146] but he later departed from it when creative differences arose between him and the librettist.

[147] In 2013, it was reported that he would helm a stage production of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party (which he had already directed as a feature film in 1968), for Geffen Playhouse.

[148] A cast including Katie Amess, Frances Barber, Steven Berkoff, Tim Roth and Nick Ullett was assembled, but the production was soon postponed for an unknown reason, and never revived.