22 Facts About Sydney Pollack

Sydney Irwin Pollack was an American film director, producer, and actor.

Sydney Pollack won the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture for Out of Africa.

Sydney Pollack produced and acted in Michael Clayton, and produced numerous films such as The Fabulous Baker Boys, Sense and Sensibility, The Talented Mr Ripley, Iris, Cold Mountain and The Reader.

Sydney Pollack acted in The Player, Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

Sydney Pollack was born in Lafayette, Indiana, to a family of Jewish immigrants, the son of Rebecca and David Sydney Pollack, a semi-professional boxer and pharmacist.

Sydney Pollack studied acting with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre from 1952 to 1954, working on a lumber truck between terms.

Sydney Pollack was drafted for two years of army service as a truck driver at Fort Carson, Colorado ending in 1958.

Sydney Pollack returned to the Playhouse at Meisner's invitation to become his assistant.

In 1960, John Frankenheimer, a friend of Sydney Pollack, asked him to come to Los Angeles to work as a dialogue coach for the child actors on Frankenheimer's first big picture, The Young Savages.

Sydney Pollack played a director in The Twilight Zone episode "The Trouble with Templeton" in 1960.

Sydney Pollack made his feature film debut as an actor in Denis Sanders' War Hunt where he met Robert Redford, who would go on to be the male lead in seven of Pollack's films as director.

Sydney Pollack found his real success in television in the 1960s by directing episodes of series, such as The Fugitive and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

Over time, Sydney Pollack's films received a total of 48 Academy Award nominations, winning 11 Oscars.

Sydney Pollack appeared in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives as a New York lawyer undergoing a midlife crisis, and in Robert Zemeckis's Death Becomes Her as an emergency room doctor.

Sydney Pollack received the first annual Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking award from the Austin Film Festival on October 21,2006.

Sydney Pollack formed a production company called Mirage Enterprises with the English director Anthony Minghella.

Besides his many feature film laurels, Sydney Pollack was nominated for five Primetime Emmys, earning two: one for directing in 1966 and another for producing, which was given four months after his death in 2008.

The moving image collection of Sydney Pollack is housed at the Academy Film Archive.

Sydney Pollack was married to Claire Bradley Griswold, a former student of his, from 1958 until his death in 2008.

Concerns about Sydney Pollack's health surfaced in 2007, when he withdrew from directing HBO's television film Recount, which aired on May 25,2008.

Sydney Pollack died from cancer the following day at his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, at the age of 73.

Sydney Pollack had been diagnosed about ten months prior to his death; the type of cancer has been variously cited as pancreatic, stomach, or of unknown primary origin.