Sydney pollack

Born on July 1, 1934 in Lafayette, a town in the state of Indiana (USA), Sydney I. Pollack was the son of a Jewish couple from Russia. His mother was a housewife and his father went from being a boxer to running a pharmacy. He had an unhappy childhood that perhaps was the germ of his creativity, as in the tragic cases of so many authors, since his parents divorced when he was very young, and his mother – who had problems with alcohol – died prematurely. After graduating from high school in Indiana, Pollack moved to New York with the goal of becoming an actor, his vocation ever since.

In the mid-50s, Pollack studied acting with the renowned teacher Sanford Meisner ( Tender is the night ). And though he took a hiatus to serve two years in the military, he then rejoined the Meisner school to become a teacher. He fell in love with one of his students, Claire Griswold, who became the woman of his life and married him. The couple had three children, one of them –Steven Pollack– died in a plane crash in the 90s. In the professional field, Pollack played a role on stage, and made his debut as a film actor with an important role in  War Hunt , drama about the Korean War, during which he was intimate with one of his co-stars, a stranger who went by the name ofRobert Redford , and who at that time was surviving with small roles in television series. Pollack himself also agreed to play roles in separate episodes. During his television shoots, he also became close friends with John Frankenheimer and Burt Lancaster , who convinced him to pursue directing on the small screen. He ended up responsible for episodes of  Alfred Hitchcock Presents  and  The Fugitive , and made his filmmaking debut on the big screen with  Life Is Worth More , a vigorous drama starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft . His first big hit was  Condemned Property , an adaptation of a play byTennessee Williams that had Francis Ford Coppola as a screenwriter. To play the protagonist, a stranger who arrived in a small town in the years of the Great Depression, Pollack called his friend Robert Redford, who from then on would become his fetish actor, and who formed a great couple on screen. with Natalie Wood , the dreamy daughter of the possessive owner of the boarding house where he is staying.

In the late 1960s, Pollack resigned himself to putting acting on the back burner, concentrating on directing. He became the favorite filmmaker of the aforementioned Burt Lancaster, whom he directed in  The Road to Vengeance , and  The Fortress , although he also took charge of some sequences in  The Swimmer , without his name appearing in the credits. He then returned to the hardships of the 1930s, in  Dance, Dance , Damn , with Jane Fonda , in which a dance marathon became a metaphor for the difficulties of the time. He directed great actors, like Robert Mitchum in the thriller about the Japanese mob  Yakuza , Al Pacino, in  An Instant, a Life , based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque , Paul Newman , in the drama  Absence of Malice , and Dustin Hoffman in the delightful comedy  Tootsie . However, his best titles are his subsequent collaborations with Redford, such as the atypical western  The Adventures of Jeremiah Johnson , the nostalgic drama The Way  We Were , also with Barbra Streisand ,  The Electric Horseman , in which he once again featured Jane Fonda, the unforgettable thriller  The Three Days of the Condor , and above all his great masterpiece,  Out of Africa, also with Meryl Streep , based on several books by Isak Dinesen. Pollack received two Oscars – relative to best director and best film, since he was also the producer – of the seven that he counted in total. His last job with Redford was  Havana , much inferior to the others.

Perhaps due to the curse that, according to urban legend, is occasionally associated with the Oscar, the truth is that the two statuettes did not sit well with Pollack. Since he received them he took his next films in stride, never achieving the brilliance of the past. He directed  The Cover , based on a novel by John Grisham , Sabrina (and Her Love) , the correct retelling of a Billy Wilder classic , the disappointing drama  Whims of Fate , with Harrison Ford , and the thriller  The Interpreter . His latest work has been the biographical documentary  Apuntes de Frank Gehry, about the famous architect. Actually, since the 1990s, Pollack seemed much more interested in producing big titles like  In Search of Bobby Fischer  or  Sense and Sensibility . Since that decade, he has also lavished himself a lot as an actor, in titles such as  The Hollywood Game ,  Husbands and Wives ,  Civil Action ,  Eyes Wide Shut ,  On the Edge of Truth ,  The Sopranos  and  Michael Clayton . He also liked to appear in some of his movies ( The Electric Horseman ,  Tootsie ,  Whims of Fate  and The Interpreter). His last job in front of the cameras was in the comedy  My Girlfriend’s Wedding , although in the last months of his life he had also worked as a producer  on Stephen Daldry ‘s The Reader . At the end of 2007 he was shooting the telefilm  Recount , about the Florida vote recount in the US elections, when he was diagnosed with the terrible disease, for which he had to be replaced by Jay Roach .