Sydney Pollack: 1934 – 2008

Legendary American filmmaker dies of cancer.

Sydney Pollack, the Oscar-winning American actor-producer-director whose work included Out of Africa, Absence of Malice, and Tootsie, died Monday at his Los Angeles home. He was 73.

Marked by an unobstrusive yet intelligent directing style, Pollack’s films were often meditative yet skeptical studies of the individual’s struggle against indifferent external forces. Born the child of Jewish Russian immigrants in Lafayette, Indiana, Pollack originally worked in New York as an actor before directing television shows including The Fugitive, The Defenders, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His second feature film, an adaptation of Tennesee Williams’ This Property Is Condemned, launched a fruitful collaborative partnership with then-relatively unknown actor Robert Redford. The two would make six more films together, including the classics Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, and Out of Africa. Co-starring Meryl Streep, Out of Africa won seven Academy Awards in 1986, including Best Director and Best Picture. 

Besides many of his own films, Pollack’s producer credits include The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Quiet American, and Bright Lights, Big City.

In addition to Redford, Pollack directed the most famous movie stars of three decades over more than thirty films, including Robert Mitchum, Jane Fonda, Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and many others. Beginning in the 1990s he carved out a second career as a character actor, often playing the unflappable, slightly arrogant voice of Establishment authority in films including Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, his own The Interpreter and Random Hearts, and last year’s Michael Clayton. His most recent screen appearance was as Patrick Dempsey’s father in the romantic comedy Made of Honor.

By way of tribute, we’d like to present the following scene from Tootsie, in which Pollack plays Dustin Hoffman’s long-suffering acting agent. Legend has it Pollack took the part at the famously difficult Hoffman’s suggestion, after the two clashed repeatedly on set.