Sydney Pollack, Film Director, Is Dead at 73
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
LOS ANGELES Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like The Way We Were,Tootsie and Out of Africa were among the most successful of the 1970s and 80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73.
The cause was cancer, said the publicist Leslee Dart, who spoke for his family.
Mr. Pollacks career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.
Hollywood honored Mr. Pollack in return. His movies received multiple Academy Award nominations, and as a director he won an Oscar for his work on the 1985 film Out of Africa as well as nominations for directing They Shoot Horses, Dont They? (1969) and Tootsie (1982).
Apart from the Gehry documentary, Mr. Pollack never directed a movie without stars. His first feature, The Slender Thread, released by Paramount Pictures in 1965, starred Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. In his next 19 films every one a romance or drama but for the single comedy, Tootsie Mr. Pollack worked with Burt Lancaster, Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman, Ms. Streisand and others. A frequent collaborator was Robert Redford.
Among Mr. Pollacks survivors are two daughters, Rebecca Pollack and Rachel Pollack, and his wife, Claire Griswold. The couple married in 1958, while Mr. Pollack was serving a two-year hitch in the Army. Their only son, Steven, died at age 34 in a 1993 plane crash in Santa Monica, Calif.
By Sydney Pollack - A selected filmography:
The Slender Thread (1965)
This Property Is Condemned (1966)
The Scalphunters (1968)
The Swimmer (1968) (uncredited)
Castle Keep (1969)
They Shoot Horses, Dont They? (1969)
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
The Way We Were (1973)
The Yakuza (1974)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Bobby Deerfield (1977)
The Electric Horseman (1979)
Absence of Malice (1981)
Tootsie (1982)
Out of Africa (1985)
Havana (1990)
The Firm (1993)
Sabrina (1995)
Random Hearts (1999)
The Interpreter (2005)
Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
LOS ANGELES Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like The Way We Were,Tootsie and Out of Africa were among the most successful of the 1970s and 80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73.
The cause was cancer, said the publicist Leslee Dart, who spoke for his family.
Mr. Pollacks career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.
Hollywood honored Mr. Pollack in return. His movies received multiple Academy Award nominations, and as a director he won an Oscar for his work on the 1985 film Out of Africa as well as nominations for directing They Shoot Horses, Dont They? (1969) and Tootsie (1982).
Apart from the Gehry documentary, Mr. Pollack never directed a movie without stars. His first feature, The Slender Thread, released by Paramount Pictures in 1965, starred Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. In his next 19 films every one a romance or drama but for the single comedy, Tootsie Mr. Pollack worked with Burt Lancaster, Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Nicole Kidman, Ms. Streisand and others. A frequent collaborator was Robert Redford.
Among Mr. Pollacks survivors are two daughters, Rebecca Pollack and Rachel Pollack, and his wife, Claire Griswold. The couple married in 1958, while Mr. Pollack was serving a two-year hitch in the Army. Their only son, Steven, died at age 34 in a 1993 plane crash in Santa Monica, Calif.
By Sydney Pollack - A selected filmography:
The Slender Thread (1965)
This Property Is Condemned (1966)
The Scalphunters (1968)
The Swimmer (1968) (uncredited)
Castle Keep (1969)
They Shoot Horses, Dont They? (1969)
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
The Way We Were (1973)
The Yakuza (1974)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Bobby Deerfield (1977)
The Electric Horseman (1979)
Absence of Malice (1981)
Tootsie (1982)
Out of Africa (1985)
Havana (1990)
The Firm (1993)
Sabrina (1995)
Random Hearts (1999)
The Interpreter (2005)
Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)