Sydney Pollack 1934–2008

Sydney Pollack 1934-2008

Sydney Pollack, the American actor and filmmaker, passed away after a battle with cancer, Monday. He was 73.

Pollack won the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture for Out of Africa in 1985, and was nominated on three other occasions, for Tootsie, They Shoot Horses, Don't They, and as producer on last year's Michael Clayton.

Pollack was perhaps more familiar to filmgoers than most directors on the strength of several notable supporting roles including Eyes Wide Shut, Husbands and Wives and Tootsie (in which he played Dustin Hoffman's exasperated agent to perfection). Most recently he was Patrick Dempsey's much-married father in Made of Honor and George Clooney's boss in Michael Clayton.

In fact he started out as an actor, and became a friend of frequent collaborator Robert Redford in the early 1960s on a film called War Hunt. They would go on to make seven films together, including the classic weepie The Way We Were (1973), the excellent conspiracy thriller Three Days Of The Condor (1975) and modern western The Electric Horseman (1979).

As a director Pollack was a craftsman who enjoyed the respect of some of the biggest stars of recent times. In addition to Redford, Hoffman, Barbra Streisand and Jane Fonda (twice), he worked with Al Pacino (Bobby Deerfield), Paul Newman (Absence Of Malice), Tom Cruise (The Firm), Harrison Ford (Sabrina and Random Hearts) and Sean Penn (The Interpreter).

Pollack's taste was for middlebrow quality dramas and his most prolific period was the 1970s - he thought this was a golden decade in the history of American film - but he remained an important player in the industry and found a kindred spirit in Anthony Minghella, with whom he formed a production company.

It's probably true that Pollack never made a great film but he made a lot of very good ones. Jeremiah Johnson, The Yakuza and Castle Keep stand out from his early years, and Tootsie is surely one of the finest comedies of the last three decades.

There's an idealistic quality to his work that is epitomized by Redford's golden boy heroism, and that comes from the best tradition in Hollywood moviemaking. His most recent film was the documentary Sketches Of Frank Gehry.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com