Hollywood film-maker Sydney Pollack, who won two Oscars for the epic romance Out of Africa, and whose career encompassed films from Tootsie to last year's Michael Clayton, has died after a 10-month battle with cancer. He was 73.

During a varied career spanning almost half a century, Pollack earned a reputation as an actor's director and worked with many of the most iconic names in Hollywood. He directed Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford in The Way We Were, Tom Cruise in The Firm and Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. Redford starred in seven of his films, including Out of Africa, alongside Meryl Streep.


10.15am BST
Director Sydney Pollack dies at 73


Paul MacInnes and agencies
Tuesday May 27, 2008
guardian.co.uk

Hollywood film-maker Sydney Pollack, who won two Oscars for the epic romance Out of Africa, and whose career encompassed films from Tootsie to last year's Michael Clayton, has died after a 10-month battle with cancer. He was 73.

During a varied career spanning almost half a century, Pollack earned a reputation as an actor's director and worked with many of the most iconic names in Hollywood. He directed Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford in The Way We Were, Tom Cruise in The Firm and Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. Redford starred in seven of his films, including Out of Africa, alongside Meryl Streep.

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Pollack died at his home in the coastal Los Angeles suburb of Pacific Palisades at about 5pm local time (1am BST). He was diagnosed with cancer last year, but doctors were never able to determine the primary source of the disease, his spokeswoman and long-time friend Leslee Dart said.

While his career as a director had slowed in recent years, his work had not and he received a best picture Oscar nomination this year for producing the George Clooney legal thriller Michael Clayton. He also had a supporting role in the same film and, as an actor, Pollack was in demand. He is currently appearing in the recently-released romantic comedy Made of Honor.

"Sydney Pollack has made some of the most influential and best-remembered films of the last three decades," film scholar Jeanine Basinger told the Los Angeles Times recently. "He had a very sharp political sensibility and a keen sense of what the issues of his world were. And he advanced and changed as the times advanced and changed."

Pollack's final directing efforts were the 2005 thriller The Interpreter, starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, and the 2006 documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, about the famed architect.

"Every time I am directing, I question why in God's name I'm doing it again," he told Entertainment Weekly in 2005. "It's like hitting yourself in the forehead with a hammer."

But Streisand praised him in a statement as "a great actor's director ... And he was a very good friend, someone I even shared secrets with."

His biggest triumph was the 1985 drama Out of Africa. Streep played the Danish owner of a coffee plantation in Kenya, and Redford the adventurer with whom she falls in love. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, the film ended up with seven statuettes, including Pollack's Oscars for best picture and director.

He reunited with Redford five years later for the flop Havana. Other setbacks included 1995's remake of Sabrina and 1999's Random Hearts.

Still, Pollack scored many more triumphs. The first of his six Oscar nominations was for directing Jane Fonda in the 1969 Depression-era drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They.

He also received directing and producing nominations for his 1982 film Tootsie, which starred Dustin Hoffman as a cross-dressing actor. Pollack himself played a small but memorable role as Hoffman's agent, only agreeing to the part after Hoffman begged him to take it.

Born on July 1 1934 in Lafayette, Indiana, Pollack sought his fortune as an actor in New York after graduating from high school. He studied under Sanford Meisner, and went on to assist the legendary acting coach. He secured acting work in television before moving behind the camera. He made his feature directorial debut in 1965 with The Slender Thread, starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft.

Pollack's illness came to public attention after he withdrew in August 2007 as the director of an HBO television movie for unspecified health reasons. He is survived by his wife of 40 years, Claire; two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel; and six grandchildren.

Award-winning film director Sydney Pollack dies at 73 | News | guardian.co.uk Film

shame really ....