Sydney Pollack is best known for the fine performances he has elicited from Hollywood stars, including Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Paul Newman and Burt Lancaster. Pollack began his own career as an actor. After studying at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner, he stayed on at Meisner's request as an acting coach, while also appearing on Broadway, in summer stock and on TV. A role in a "Playhouse 90" production of "For Whom the Bell Tolls", directed by John Frankenheimer, led to an introduction to Burt Lancaster. It was through Lancaster that Pollack got his chance to begin directing for TV and over the next five years, he directed over 80 shows, most notably 15 episodes of the popular "Ben Casey" series.

Pollack's first feature was "The Slender Thread" (1965), featuring Anne Bancroft as a suicidal woman and Sidney Poitier as a crisis center worker trying to keep her on the telephone while emergency services track her down. This taut drama, shot on location in Seattle in black-and-white, opened with an aerial shot which would soon become one of the director's trademarks.

After Pollack directed "This Property Is Condemned" (1966), "The Scalphunters" (1968) and "Castle Keep" (1969), he achieved his first major success with "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" (1970), a harrowing drama set during a Depression-era dance marathon. Although the film was criticized for toning down the harsher, more abrasive qualities of the Horace McCoy novel on which it was based, it did earn Gig Young an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor and Pollack a nomination for Best Director.

Pollack next scored at the boxoffice with "The Way We Were" (1973), an old-fashioned love story starring Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand. After several missteps, Pollack returned to form with "The Electric Horseman" (1979), this time pairing Redford with Jane Fonda in a romantic comedy about a modern-day cowboy and a reporter. He enjoyed a huge commercial and critical success with the breakthrough gender-bending comedy Tootsie" (1982), in which he acted in a small but memorable role as the agent of an intransigent actor played by Dustin Hoffman (who insisted that the director play the part). Pollack's career reached a zenith of sorts with "Out of Africa" (1985), the sumptuous if overlong love story of writer Isak Dinesen (Meryl Streep) and Denys Finch Hatton (Redford) which Pollack produced and directed, winning Oscars for both.

Since his triumphant trip to Africa, Pollack has been busier as a producer than as a director. Some of his varied producing credits include "Major League" (1989), "The Fabulous Baker Boys" (1989), "Presumed Innocent" (1990), "Dead Again" (1991) and "Searching for Bobby Fischer" (1993). Pollack has directed only two features in that same span: "Havana" (1990), a resounding critical and commercial flop featuring an aging Robert Redford, and "The Firm" (1993), a blockbuster legal thriller starring Tom Cruise and a stellar supporting cast. He has devoted more time to acting in recent years, receiving kudos for his major supporting performance in Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives" (1992) as a New York professional who leaves his wife (Judy Davis) of many years. That same year, he appeared in Robert Altman's "The Player" and in Robert Zemeckis's "Death Becomes Her". Pollack was tapped to replace Harvey Keitel in Stanley Kubrick's long-aborning sexually-themed drama "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999).

Credit: entertainment.lycos.com