Director Sydney Pollack Dies at 73

Tue, 05/27/2008 - 1:23pm by andrewjmac

Sydney Pollack, the director, producer, and actor with a career that spanned six decades, died yesterday of cancer at the age of 73. Pollack's career was so varied and rich that few in Hollywood never worked with him and even fewer had less than the greatest of respect for him. Pollack is best known as a director, the guiding force behind such classics as Tootsie, Out of Africa, The Way We Were, and Three Days of the Condor (one of my personal favorites, about a bookish man whose very bookishness is the key to his survival). Pollack was often not just a director but a producer, even lending this talent out to other directors like Anthony Minghella and most recently Tony Gilroy, whose Pollack-produced directorial debut Michael Clayton earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

Pollack always seemed a little more human than most directors because of his willingness to act in films, both his own and others. I feel a little more like I know him from seeing his portrayals of Michael's agent George Fields in Tootsie and the mid-life crisis stricken Jack in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives. Most directors who appear in their own movies fall somewhere between being like Alfred Hitchcock (silent) or Quentin Tarantino (who we all wish was silent). Pollack was one of the few whose acting equalled his direction and made everything he was in better. He will be missed by all movie lovers.