Director/producer/actor Sydney Pollack died of cancer 26 May 2008, according to his agent, Leslee Dart. Born 1 July 1934 in Lafayette, Indiana, he won the Academy Award for Best Director in 1986 for Out of Africa, which also won for Best Picture. He was also nominated for Best Director for Tootsie (1982) and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). Pollack also won an Emmy for Directing in 1966 for Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre: “The Game”.
Best known as a director, he had very few genre credits. As an actor, he appeared in Death Becomes Her (1992) and one episode of The Twilight Zone (“The Trouble with Templeton”, 1960). He produced Sliding Doors (1998), and directed an episode of The Fugitive (“Man on a String”, 1964).
After graduating from high school in Indiana in 1952, he moved to New York City, and studied acting with Sanford Meisner at The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater until 1954. He served two years in the Army, and then returned to the Neighborhood Playhouse to teach. Pollack began his acting career on the stage, then made his name as television director in the early 1960s. He made his big screen acting debut in War Hunt (1962), where he met fellow actor Robert Redford, and the two co-stars established a life-long friendship. Pollack called on Redford to play opposite Natalie Wood in This Property Is Condemned (1966). Pollack and Redford worked together on six more films over the years, including Out of Africa.
Pollack is survived by his wife of almost 50 years, Claire Griswold, their two daughters, and six grandchildren. Their son, Steven, died in a plane crash in 1993. Pollack’s brother Bernie, who also survives him, is a Hollywood costume designer whose most recent work includes Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.