Sydney's sense and sensibility

Sydney Pollack Director, actor, producer. Born Lafayette, Indiana, US, July 1, 1934. Died Los Angeles, May 26, aged 73.

Sydney Pollack Director, actor, producer. Born Lafayette, Indiana, US, July 1, 1934. Died Los Angeles, May 26, aged 73.

SYDNEY Pollack, in an interview with The Australian last year about his biographical film of the architect Frank Gehry, was asked if he enjoyed working. In a thoughtful tone he agreed that, yes, he had a great life.   

Pollack, who died on Monday after a nine-month battle with cancer, was one of Hollywood's more versatile filmmakers. An actor and producer as well as a director, he is best known for the Academy Award-winning films Tootsie (1982) and Out of Africa (1985), movies that demonstrated his sure touch in comedy and romantic drama.

"I'm not essentially a comedy director," he once said. And yet Tootsie, with Dustin Hoffman as an unemployed actor who puts on a dress to get work in a television soap, has been called one of America's best comedies.

Pollack balanced box-office success with critical acclaim over half a century. The list of actors he directed is like a who's who of Hollywood A-listers: Robert Mitchum in The Yakuza, Sally Field and Paul Newman in Absence of Malice, Tom Cruise in The Firm, Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway in Three Days of the Condor, and Redford and Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were, and Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn in The Interpreter.

He tackled social issues on the silver screen and earned a worldwide reputation for an acute romantic and political sensibility that led to some of the most respected films of the late 1960s and through the '80s. Pollack was twice nominated for an Oscar for best director, with They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), a harrowing Depression-era drama starring Jane Fonda, and Tootsie.

He finally won the directing and best picture Oscars with Out of Africa, a masterpiece with Meryl Streep as a Danish baroness and Redford as a big-game hunter who have a love affair destined for failure in colonial Kenya. Jessica Lange won the Oscar for best supporting actress in Tootsie.

Joe Morgenstern wrote in The Wall Street Journal that authority figures are a dime a dozen in Hollywood, where any half-trained director can carry on like an auteur, but Pollack's authority sprang from a rare combination of common sense and unforced wisdom: about his craft, about the world.

It's easy to forget how consistently he honoured the human core of Out of Africa, a deeply satisfying drama produced on an epic scale. Redford was never better than in his collaborations with Pollack, who directed him in seven films, and never more dashing than when he takes Streep for a ride in his bright new Gypsy Moth biplane. It is not just a ride but a lyrical adventure that fills the screen with Africa's splendours for three enchanted minutes. In accepting his Oscar, Pollack commended Streep, who was nominated but did not win. "I could not have made this movie without Meryl Streep. She is astounding: personally, professionally, all ways."

With the last film he directed, Sketches of Frank Gehry, Pollack successfully turned his hand to documentary. The project came about when Pollack flew to Bilbao, Spain, for the opening of Gehry's Guggenheim Museum.

Gehry recalls: "I saw this crazy guy beating on the windows at the museum -- he was out there with a throwaway drugstore camera in his hand -- so I opened the door and let him in. He took some shots of the building, stayed for the party and flew away."

The filmmaker and architect became friends and eventually Pollack was asked to make the film, which records their conversations. Sketches of Frank Gehry, says Morgenstern, is far more than the sum of these conversations; it's a gorgeous evocation of Gehry's work. But it's also a testament to Pollack's instincts, his easy way with conversation -- as good a listener as raconteur -- and his understanding of the creative process. In his pragmatic, no-nonsense way, he made a film about creativity that nails its subject with a carpenter's energy and a poet's expansiveness.

Pollack was the son of first-generation Russian-Americans. In high school, he fell in love with theatre, a passion that prompted him to forgo college, move to New York and enrol in the Neighbourhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. Studying under legendary acting coach Sanford Meisner, Pollack spent several years there cutting his teeth and eventually became Meisner's assistant. After appearing in a handful of Broadway productions in the 1950s, Pollack turned his eye to directing, beginning with television work and then early film titles such as The Slender Thread and They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

"Sydney let the dialogue and the emotion of a scene speak for itself," says Michael Apted, president of the Directors Guild of America. "Not given to cinematic tricks, his gentle and thoughtful touch and his focus on the story let us inhabit the world he created in each film."

But Pollack, who had a striking presence on the screen, never gave up acting. In later years he devoted increasing time to acting, appearing in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, Robert Altman's The Player, Robert Zemeckis's Death Becomes Her, and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. He had a recurring role in the TV comedy Will & Grace and appeared in The Sopranos and Frasier.

Hoffman, who took the dual role of Michael Dorsey-Dorothy Michaels in Tootsie, convinced Pollack to play the part of Michael's agent. When Dorothy reveals herself as Michael in drag, Pollack said: "Oh ... my God, Michael, I beg you to get some therapy."

Last year, he played law firm boss Marty Bach opposite George Clooney in Michael Clayton, which he also co-produced and which received seven Oscar nominations.

"Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better," Clooney said. "A tip of the hat to a class act. He'll be missed terribly."

Pollack's last screen appearance was in Made of Honour, a romantic comedy now in cinemas, where he played the oft-married father of star Patrick Dempsey's character.

Pollack also produced many independent films with the late Anthony Minghella and the production company Mirage Enterprises. His recent producing credits include The Talented Mr Ripley, Cold Mountain and the new HBO TV film Recount, about the 2000 US presidential election.

Pollack was diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago and died on Monday afternoon, surrounded by family, at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles.

Pollack is survived by his wife, Claire, two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel, his brother Bernie and six grandchildren.

Agencies

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS OF SYDNEY POLLACK, 1934-2008

Director
The Interpreter (2005)
Random Hearts (1999)
The Firm (1993) Havana (1990)
Out of Africa (1985)
Tootsie (1982)
Absence of Malice (1981)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
The Way We Were (1973)
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

Actor
Made of Honour (2008)
Michael Clayton (2007)
Will & Grace (TV, 2000-06)
The Interpreter (2005)
Changing Lanes (2002)
Random Hearts (1999)
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
A Civil Action (1998)
Husbands and Wives (1992)
The Player (1992)
Tootsie (1982)

Producer
Recount (TV, 2008)
Leatherheads (2008)
Michael Clayton (2007)
The Interpreter (2005)
Cold Mountain (2003)
The Quiet American (2002)
The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Random Hearts (1999)
Sliding Doors (1998)
Sense and Sensibility (1995)
Sabrina (1995)
Havana (1990)
Presumed Innocent (1990)
The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)
Bright Lights, Big City (1988)
Out of Africa (1985)
Tootsie (1982)
Absence of Malice (1981)