Sydney Pollack

Sydney Irwin Pollack (July 1, 1934 – May 26, 2008) was an American film director, producer, and actor who also appeared on Broadway, making his stage debut in 1955 in The Dark Is Light Enough. Born in Lafayette, Indiana, to Rebecca and David Pollack, a semi-professional boxer and pharmacist, he was raised in a family of Jewish immigrants. The family later relocated to South Bend, where his parents divorced. His mother, who struggled with alcoholism and emotional problems, died at age 37 when Pollack was 16.

After completing high school, Pollack left Indiana for New York City at 17, foregoing earlier plans to pursue college and medical school. Between 1952 and 1954 he trained as an actor under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, working on a lumber truck between terms to support himself. His Broadway appearance in The Dark Is Light Enough came in 1955. He subsequently served two years in the U.S. Army as a truck driver at Fort Carson, Colorado, concluding in 1958, after which Meisner invited him back to the Playhouse as his assistant. That same year he married Claire Bradley Griswold, a former student of his; they remained married until his death and had three children.

Pollack's transition into film and television began in the early 1960s. He played a director in the 1960 Twilight Zone episode "The Trouble with Templeton" and made his feature film acting debut in Denis Sanders's War Hunt (1962), where he first met Robert Redford. John Frankenheimer, a friend of Pollack's, brought him to Los Angeles in 1960 to serve as a dialogue coach on The Young Savages, and it was during this period that Burt Lancaster encouraged him to pursue directing. Pollack found his initial directorial footing in television, helming episodes of series including The Fugitive and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour before making his feature directorial debut with The Slender Thread in 1965.

Over a career spanning four decades, Pollack directed a succession of commercially and critically successful films. His first Academy Award nomination for directing came for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? in 1969, followed by a second nomination for Tootsie in 1982. His 1985 film Out of Africa, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, earned him Academy Awards for both Best Director and Best Picture. Across his directing career, Pollack guided 12 actors to Oscar-nominated performances, among them Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, and Holly Hunter; Gig Young and Jessica Lange won Oscars for their work in his films. His other notable directorial credits include Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Way We Were (1973), The Yakuza (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), Absence of Malice (1981), The Firm (1993), and Sabrina (1995). In total, films he directed received 48 Academy Award nominations and won 11 Oscars.

Pollack was also an active producer, with credits including The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), Sense and Sensibility (1995), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Iris (2001), Cold Mountain (2003), and Michael Clayton (2007). He and British director Anthony Minghella co-founded the production company Mirage Enterprises; their final collaboration, The Reader (2008), earned both men posthumous Oscar nominations for Best Picture. Pollack received his sixth Academy Award nomination, in the Best Picture category, for Michael Clayton, a film in which he also acted. He earned five Primetime Emmy nominations in total, winning two: one for directing in 1966 and one for producing, awarded four months after his death in 2008. In 1984 he co-founded the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles, serving as co-chairman.

As an actor, Pollack resumed screen appearances with greater frequency in the 1990s, often portraying corrupt or morally conflicted figures of authority. He appeared in Robert Altman's The Player (1992), Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives (1992) as a New York lawyer in midlife crisis, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton (2007). He also took on character roles in A Civil Action (1998), Death Becomes Her (1992), Changing Lanes (2002), and the romantic comedy Made of Honor (2008), his final film role. On television he was a recurring guest on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, playing Will Truman's father, and made guest appearances on The Sopranos and Entourage in 2007. He was among a select group of non- or former actors granted membership in the Actors Studio. In October 2006 he received the first annual Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking award from the Austin Film Festival. The moving image collection of Sydney Pollack is housed at the Academy Film Archive.

Pollack was diagnosed with cancer approximately ten months before his death. He died on May 26, 2008, at his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, at the age of 73.