Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art. Sydney Pollack. At various times he was executive director of the Actors Studio West, chairman of American Cinematheque and an advocate for artists’ rights. Wife of director Sydney Pollack since 1958. “To tell you the truth, if I knew what was wrong, I’d have fixed it,” Mr. Pollack told The Los Angeles Times in 1993. In 1965, Charles Champlin, writing in The Los Angeles Times, compared Mr. Pollack to the director Elliot Silverstein, whose western spoof, “Cat Ballou,” had been released earlier that year, and Stuart Rosenberg, soon to be famous for “Cool Hand Luke” (1967). Sydney Pollack’s masterful direction really pulls you into an intricate narrative about law firm ethics and legal tax filing for his legal paranoia thriller The Firm (1993). LOS ANGELES — Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. It seemed to please no one, though Mr. Pollack defended it. Help keep Sydney Pollack profile up to date. Their only son, Steven, died at age 34 in a 1993 plane crash in Santa Monica, Calif. photos, He delivered a trademark performance as an old-bull lawyer who demands dark deeds from a subordinate, played by George Clooney. Sydney Irwin Pollack was born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., and reared in South Bend. His 1985 film Out of Africa won him Academy Awards for directing and producing. Sydney Irwin Pollack (July 1, 1934 – May 26, 2008) was an American film director, producer and actor. The couple married in 1958, while Mr. Pollack was serving a two-year hitch in the Army. Claire Griswold was born on October 30, 1936 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA as Claire Bradley Griswold. He studied there for two years under Sanford Meisner, who was in charge of its acting department, and remained for five more as Mr. Meisner’s assistant, teaching acting but also appearing onstage and in television. His first feature, “The Slender Thread,” released by Paramount Pictures in 1965, starred Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. It took in more than $177 million at the domestic box office and received 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture. But only with “Tootsie,” in 1982, did Mr. Pollack become a fully realized Hollywood player. A regizat mai bine de 21 de filme, a jucat în peste 30 de filme și a produs peste 44 de filme. But Mr. Pollack — who played Mr. Hoffman’s agent in the film — was drawn to the seemingly doomed romance between the cross-dressing Hoffman character and the actress played by Jessica Lange. or He is most remembered for Tootsie. Sydney Pollack was previously married to Claire Griswold (1958 - 2008). news The cause was cancer, said a representative of the family. As the film — a comedy about a struggling actor who disguises himself as a woman to get a coveted television part — was being shot for Columbia Pictures, Mr. Pollack and Mr. Hoffman became embroiled in a semi-public feud, with Mr. Ovitz running shuttle diplomacy between them. Pollack directed more than 20 films and 10 television shows, acted in over 30 movies or shows and produced over 44 films. Sydney Irwin Pollack was born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., and reared in South Bend. Please read the following before uploading. Hollywood honored Mr. Pollack in return. Three children. In 1970, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” his bleak fable of love and death among marathon dancers in the Great Depression, based on a Horace McCoy novel, received nine Oscar nominations, including the one for directing. Mr. Champlin cited all three as artists who had used television rather than B movies to learn their craft. With “Absence of Malice” in 1981, Mr. Pollack entered the realm of public debate. worker thrust into a mystery, did somewhat better with the critics. So was his leading man, Dustin Hoffman. “The middle ground is now gone,” Mr. Pollack said in a discussion with Shimon Peres in the fall 1998 issue of New Perspectives Quarterly. A încetat din viață răpus de un cancer pe data de 26 mai 2008 Among Mr. Pollack’s survivors are daughters, Rachel and Rebecca, and his wife, Claire Griswold, who was once among his acting students. film, Mr. Pollack developed a love of drama at South Bend High School and, instead of going to college, went to New York and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. With a partner, the filmmaker Anthony Minghella, he ran Mirage Enterprises, a production company whose films included Mr. Minghella’s “Cold Mountain” and the documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry,” released last year, the last film directed by Mr. Pollack. The film’s story of a newspaper reporter (Sally Field) who is fed a false story by federal officials trying to squeeze information from a businessman (Paul Newman) was widely viewed as a corrective to the adulation of investigative reporters that followed Alan J. Pakula’s hit movie “All the President’s Men,” with its portrayal of the Watergate scandal. The picture received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and a Best Actor nomination for Mr. Clooney. Sydney Pollack and Claire Griswold were married for 49 years before Sydney Pollack died, leaving behind his partner and 3 children.