Friedman, who refused to specify his age, attributes many of his passions and habits to an unusual education. He described his childhood as Selvaggia and said he informed many of his artistic and career choices. She was one of the four children born from a violinist father who left the family in the period in which she was born and a pianist mother who described as a negligent. The brothers, often left to do alone, created their theater company, who called the show Sonia Friedman. (He was the youngest.)
“My life has been, since the first memory, telling stories,” he said. “This is how we survived.”
The school was a struggle and at some point Friedman was expelled absurdly. At 13, he had left the house for a free boarding school and free wheel, and for 16 years he worked full time; With the help of his sister Maria, who was then a growing actress, he found concerts for marginal shows and Pub phases while taking night lessons. He worked in a variety of crew capacity: in a more memorable way, he was a follow-Spot operator on a “jumpers” production of Stoppard, but was fired for losing a signal.
At the drama School, where he studied management of the stage, a student partner was the daughter of Laurence Olivier, who brought her, at 19, to a job interview with Olivier and his wife Joan Plowright; They hired her for a production at the IndiBurgh Fringe Festival and she was coming. A great break arrived when the National Theater hired her to work with artists including Harold Pinter, who took it under his wing.
Over time, he wanted more. “I bored myself,” he said. “I became much more fascinated by all the operation of the room.”
At that point it was the late 80s and the AIDS crisis was unleashed through the theatrical community. She launched into hospitals to raise funds, visiting the hospitals, helping to manage assistance to the shop, which has enrolled celebrities to work in stores to generate money for the charity bodies of the AIDS. And then, after having made his first production experiences, making a small scale for National work on tour, he made another leap, co -founding a theater company called Out of joint. One thing led to another and the Ambassador Theater Group, a large British theater company, asked her to manage one of her places.