Sydney Pollack

The Oscar-winning director who tackled many genres

Sydney Pollack

1934–2008

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Sydney Pollack had been working as an actor and dialogue coach when, in 1961, his friend Burt Lancaster suggested he become a director. Lancaster introduced him to Lew Wasserman, the chairman of MCA, and told Wasserman, “He can’t be worse than some of the bums you got workin’ for you now.” Indeed, Pollack went on to direct some of the most critically acclaimed movies of the ’70s and ’80s, among them Three Days of the Condor, Tootsie, and Out of Africa, for which he won an Academy Award.

“Pollack once described himself as an ‘unpopular and rather sad kid’ while growing up in Indiana,” said The Washington Post. But “movies enchanted him.” After high school, he studied acting in New York and was soon appearing in such popular TV series as Have Gun Will Travel and The Twilight Zone. However, he realized his limits: “I knew I wasn’t going to be any great shakes as an actor. The way I looked, I would play the soda jerk or the friend of a friend.” So he welcomed the chance to direct. Though he “bombed” critically with his first film efforts, he broke through with They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). This “grim” look at Depression-era marathon dance contests earned Pollack an Oscar nomination.

“Pollack often filled his widescreen canvases with vividly detailed period sets, vast on-location vistas, and a cast of larger-than-life thespians,” said Variety. But he constantly strove to tell stories that would “expose injustices” and show the individual in conflict with society. In The Way We Were (1973), Barbra Streisand played an ex-communist who faced Hollywood blacklisting. In The Electric Horseman (1979), Robert Redford played a broken cowboy confronted with corporate greed. And in Tootsie (1982), in which Dustin Hoffman cross-dresses to get a part on a soap opera, Pollack showed how tough it is for women to succeed in a man’s world. “I’ve made personal films all along,” he said. “I just made them in another form.”

When not directing, Pollack taught acting and occasionally appeared before the camera; among his more memorable roles were Hoffman’s agent in Tootsie and millionaire Victor Ziegler in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999). He also had more than 40 credits as a producer or executive producer, including on the HBO production Recount, which aired this week.