US:SYDNEY POLLACK, who died of cancer at his Los Angeles home on Monday, was what the film industry calls a multi-hyphenate, someone who juggles different jobs, as Pollack did so successfully as a prolific director, producer and actor. He received two Oscars, for best picture and best director, for Out of Africain 1985. He was 73.
One of Pollack's most recent productions, Michael Clayton, received seven Oscar nominations this year. George Clooney, who played the title role, commented yesterday: "Sydney made the work a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better. A tip of the hat to a class act. He will be missed terribly."
Raised in South Bend, Indiana, Pollack became interested in acting at high school and went to New York where he studied at the Neighbourhood Playhouse. There he met acting student Claire Griswold, to whom he was married for the past 50 years. They have two daughters; their son was killed in a 1993 plane crash.
Between 1960 and 1965, Pollack directed more than 80 episodic TV dramas, among them The Fugitiveand The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He made his film acting debut in War Hunt(1962), forging a close friendship with fellow actor Robert Redford, whom he directed in seven feature films.
Pollack's first cinema film as a director was The Slender Thread(1965), featuring Anne Bancroft and Sidney Poitier, and he received his first Oscar nomination for They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, a searing Depression-era drama set during a marathon dance competition and starring Jane Fonda.
It was one of Pollack's best films, as was Three Days of the Condor(1975), a gripping addition to the cycle of post-Watergate paranoid thrillers. That was among four hit 1970s productions on which he directed Redford, along with Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were(which co-starred Barbra Streisand) and The Electric Horseman.
Pollack enjoyed one of his biggest commercial and critical successes when he directed the highly entertaining comedy Tootsie(1982), featuring Dustin Hoffman as an actor so desperate for work that he poses as a woman, with Pollack playing his agent.
Pollack and Redford reunited for Out of Africa(1985), which also starred Meryl Streep and won seven Oscars.
His output as a director over the next 20 years was mostly undistinguished, although it included two substantial hits, The Firm(1993), a John Grisham adaptation starring Tom Cruise and the thriller, The Interpreter(2005), with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman. His final film as a director was a well-regarded documentary on an architect, Sketches of Frank Gehry.
In 1999 Pollack reflected in depth on his career at an Irish Timespublic interview in Dublin.
In between directing and producing pictures, he found time to act in films for other directors, most notably Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shutand Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton. His last role was a wealthy, much-married man in the current release, Made of Honor.
Pollack and British director Anthony Minghella, who died two months ago, were partners in the successful production company, Mirage Enterprises. Despite Pollack's illness over the past year, he continued to work, and several of his Mirage productions have yet to be released. They include director Stephen Daldry's The Reader, starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, and Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret with Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo.
Pollack served as executive producer on Recount, dealing with the 2000 US presidential election count, which had its first screening on the HBO channel in the US last Sunday, the night before he died.