LOS ANGELES — Sydney Pollack, the Academy Award-winning director of “Out of Africa” who achieved acclaim making popular, mainstream movies such as “The Way We Were” and “Tootsie,” died Monday. He was 73.
Pollack, who also was an actor and a producer, died of cancer at his Los Angeles home, according to his publicist, Leslee Dart.
After launching his show- business career as an actor and acting teacher in New York in the 1950s, Pollack moved west in the early ’60s and began directing episodic TV before turning to films.
Pollack was credited with directing 20 films, including “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” a 1969 drama about Depression-era marathon dancers that earned Pollack his first Oscar nomination for best director.
Pollack directed seven movies with Robert Redford, starting with “This Property Is Condemned” in 1966. The Pollack-Redford collaboration also produced “The Way We Were” (with Barbra Streisand), “The Electric Horseman” (with Jane Fonda) and “Out of Africa” (with Meryl Streep).
“Out of Africa,” the 1985 drama based on Danish author Isak Dinesen’s experiences in Kenya during the early part of the 20th century, earned Pollack two Academy Awards: director and producer of the film, which also won the best picture Oscar.
Pollack also received a best director Oscar nomination — and a New York Film Critics Circle Award — for “Tootsie,” the 1982 comedy in which Dustin Hoffman plays an unemployed New York actor who revives his career by transforming himself into a “woman.”
