"Los Angeles — Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like 'The Way We Were,' 'Tootsie' and 'Out of Africa' were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73. The cause was cancer, said the publicist Leslee Dart, who spoke for his family.
"Mr. Pollack’s career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.
Hollywood honored Mr. Pollack in return. His movies received multiple Academy Award nominations, and as a director he won an Oscar for his work on the 1985 film “Out of Africa” as well as nominations for directing 'They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?' (1969) and 'Tootsie' (1982)."
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