Obituary: Sydney Pollack
Obituary by Jack Foley
OSCAR-winning film director and producer Sydney Pollack has died of cancer at the age of 73.
Best known for 1985’s Oscar-winning epic romance Out Of Africa, starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, Pollack also directed Tootsie, starring Dustin Hoffman, and The Way We Were, which paired Redford with Barbra Streisand.
He also enjoyed acting and regularly appeared in front of the camera – most recently in the Oscar nominated film Michael Clayton, alongside George Clooney, and in romantic comedy Made of Honour, starring Patrick Dempsey.
He died on Monday (May 26, 2008) at his home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, surrounded by members of his family – just 10 months after being diagnosed with cancer.
Born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, America, Sydney Irwin Pollack was raised in South Bend, Indiana, and soon developed a passion for acting, which he studied at South Bend High School.
He then headed straight to New York and the Neighborhood Playhouse School for Theater, where Sanford Meisner – one of the most respected and influential acting teachers of the 20th century – took him under his wing, first as a student and then as his assistant.
Although popular as a teacher, his time at the Playhouse didn’t last long as he was soon encouraged to direct by luminaries such as John Frankenheimer and Burt Lancaster. He did, however, meet Claire Griswold, a former pupil, whom Pollack married and remained married to for 50 years.
As an early director Pollack He started out in small television shows such as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Ben Casey, before deciding to make his feature film debut with The Slender Thread, a story about a desperate woman and the suicide hotline volunteer who attempts to keep her on the line while waiting for the police to find her. It starred Anne Bancroft and Sydney Poitier but did not win favourable reviews.
Likewise, his second film, This Property Is Condemned, based on the play by Tennessee Williams, and starring Natalie Wood and Robert Redford. It did, however, pair him with Redford for the first time – an actor who would regularly collaborate with Pollack throughout the remainder of his career (seven times in total) and bring them both some of their biggest hits.
Pollack didn’t have to wait long for success himself, though, as the Depression-era drama They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? soon followed in 1969 and helped to earn Jane Fonda an Oscar nomination and establish her as a serious actress.
Thereafter, he enjoyed a string of critical and commercial successes, including Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were and Three Days of The Condor, all with Redford, The Yakuza, with Robert Mitchum, and Bobby Deerfield, with Al Pacino.
In 1982, he helmed the box office hit Tootsie, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange, who won the Oscar for best supporting actress, before following that, in 1985, with his biggest and best-loved hit, Out Of Africa, which garnered 11 Oscar nominations, and won seven (including Best Film and Best Director).
He would later direct Tom Cruise in the critically-acclaimed legal thriller The Firm, based on the novel by John Grisham, and Harrison Ford in Random Hearts.
Reflecting on his experiences with some of the Hollywood greats, he compared them to working with thoroughbred horses, in so far as they could be tempermental and he sometimes got thrown, but when they preformed the experience was thrilling.
Throughout his career, Pollack also enjoyed producing as well as acting, and enjoyed doing all three in his later years.
He teamed up with late British filmmaker Anthony Minghella at production company Mirage Enterprises to become a prolific producer of independent films, with successes including Minghella’s own Cold Mountain and Sketches of Frank Gehry, a 2007 documentary which was the last film Pollack directed.
As producer, he also helped to finance the likes of George Clooney’s Leatherheads, as well as the BBC hit The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which was to prove Minghella’s last work.
As an actor, he enjoyed supporting roles in films like The Player, Eyes Wide Shut and The Sopranos, often drawing acclaim for bringing gravitas and a worldly wisdom to his performances.
Earlier this year, it was announced by his publicist, Leslie Dart, that Pollack had been forced to step down from his latest project, Recount, because of illness.
The film, which is to examine the lives of the ordinary people caught up in the ballot recounts in Florida at the end of the 2000 US presidential race, will now be directed by Jay Roach.
Pollack is survived by his wife, Claire; two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel; his brother Bernie; and six grandchildren. Another of his sons, son, Steven, tragically died in a plane crash in Santa Monica in 1993.