Sydney Pollack dead at 73
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — Sydney Pollack, the Academy Award-winning director of “Out of Africa” who achieved acclaim making popular, mainstream movies with A-list stars, including “The Way We Were” and “Tootsie,” died Monday. He was 73.
Pollack, who also was a producer and actor, died of cancer at his home in the Pacific Palisades district of the city, according to Leslee Dart, his publicist and friend.
After launching his show-business career as an actor and acting teacher in New York City in the 1950s, Pollack moved west in the early ’60s and began directing episodic television before turning to films. Beginning with “The Slender Thread,” a 1965 drama starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft, Pollack was credited with directing 20 films.
“Out of Africa,” the 1985 drama based on Danish author Isak Dinesen’s experiences in Kenya, earned Pollack two Academy Awards: as director and as producer of the film, which won the best-picture Oscar.
Pollack also received a best-director Oscar nomination — and a New York Film Critics Circle Award — for “Tootsie” in 1982.
As an actor, Pollack later appeared in a number of films, including Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives,” Robert Altman’s “The Player,” Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” and the recent Oscar-nominated Tony Gilroy film “Michael Clayton.” Pollack also turned up in guest roles on TV series such as “Frasier,” “Will Grace” and “The Sopranos.”
His most recent film was “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” a feature-length documentary released in this country in 2006 about his friend, the renowned architect.
He met his wife, Claire, were married in 1958 and had three children, Rebecca, Rachel and Steven. Steven died in a plane crash in 1993. He is also survived by six grandchildren and a brother, Bernie, a Hollywood costume designer.
Services will be private.