US director Sydney Pollack dies
US film director and producer Sydney Pollack has died of cancer, aged 73.
He won producing and directing Oscars for the epic romance Out of Africa, starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, in 1985.
He also directed Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, and The Way We Were, in which Redford partnered Barbra Streisand.
He died on Monday, surrounded by family members, at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles. He had been diagnosed with cancer 10 months ago.
While best remembered as a director, Sydney Pollack started out as an actor, and continued performing throughout his career, appearing in his last film, Michael Clayton, in 2007.
From the start, his career was identified with the big names and big studios of Hollywood.
The Slender Thread, his first feature film, starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft, was released by Paramount Pictures in 1965.
In later years he collaborated with the likes of Burt Lancaster, Jane Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Al Pacino, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, and Nicole Kidman.
Out of Africa garnered 11 Oscar nominations, and won seven.
He compared the Hollywood greats to working with thoroughbred horses, they were tempermental and he sometimes got thrown, but when they preformed the experience was thrilling.
But critics said as well as working with crowd-drawing stars, he also produced passionate and intelligent films that respected their audiences.
Later in his career, Pollack teamed up with British film-maker Anthony Minghella at production company Mirage Enterprises to become a prolific producer of independent films.
Their films included Cold Mountain and last year's Sketches of Frank Gehry - a 2007 documentary which was the last film Pollack directed.
Born in Indiana on 1 July, 1934, Pollack had developed a love of drama at school and opted to enrol at drama school in New York - where he studied for two years under Sanford Meisner - rather than going to college.
Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack dies
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