Reuters/Eric Gaillard
Oscar-winning director William Friedkin, who carved his place into film history with classics such as The French Connection and The Exorcist, died Monday in Los Angeles, his wife, the former studio head Sherry Lansing, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
The 87-year-old’s cause of death was not disclosed.
Friedkin rose to prominence in the 1970s alongside a cohort of inventive and risk-seeking directors like Peter Bogdanovich, Roman Polanski and Francis Ford Coppola, using his own history as a documentarian to produce stylized thrillers with notably pessimistic overtones—a reflection of a turbulent era marked by economic uncertainty, the Vietnam War and Watergate.