Sydney Pollack

Born: July 1 1934
Where: Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Died: May 26 (cancer) Los Angeles, California, USA

The Oscar-winning film-maker's skill as an actor was credited with him coaxing award winning performances out of his stars as a director.

Both Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep were nominated for Academy Awards for their work on Pollack's Tootsie and Out of Africa.

The latter landed Pollack a best director and best picture Oscar while the former was nominated for both awards.

He compared working with the Hollywood greats to training thoroughbred horses, saying they were temperamental and he sometimes got thrown - but when they performed, the experience was umatchable.

Born to first generation Russian-Jewish Americans in Indiana, Pollack's father was a boxer and his mother a pharmacist.

His parents divorced when he was young and his mother, an alcoholic, died at the age of 37 while Pollack was a student at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

Under the tutelage of Sanford Meisner, he returned to the playhouse as a an actor after completing two years military service.

His appearance in a John Frankenheimer-directed TV show led to a job as dialogue coach in the filmmaker's 1961 crime drama The Young Savages.

He quickly moved into television, directing The Defenders, The Naked City, The Fugitive and Dr Kildare.

After his big screen directorial debut - The Slender Thread - he went on to helm competent if not inspired outings including This Property Is Condemned.

(he cast an unknown Robert Redford whom he first met when they starred together in the 1962 movie War Hunt).

Pollack made his breakthrough in 1969 with the Depression era drama They Shoot Horses Don't They, which attracted nine Oscar nominations.

Gig Young won best supporting actor but Jane Fonda is said to have lost out as best actress because of her anti-Vietnam War stance.

Four years later The Way We Were, starring Barbra Streisand and Redford, became one of the biggest movies of the decade.

In 1975, The Yakuza delved into the world of Japanese gangsters but Pollack achieved greater success with the suspense thriller Three Days of the Condor.

(in 1991 he sued a Danish TV company for "pan and scanning" the film, claiming it mutilated the integrity of his work).

Offbeat comedy The Electric Horseman, in 1979, successfully reunited Fonda and Redford while the drama Absence of Malice - with Paul Newman and Sally Field - also impressed the critics.

In 1982, Pollack returned to comedy in top form with Tootsie, the story of an out-of-work actor (Dustin Hoffman) who achieves success by masquerading as a woman.

During the making of the movie, Hoffman insisted the director get back in front of the camera to play his agent.

The Oscar-winning romantic drama Out of Africa, with Streep and Redford, continued Pollack's run of success until the 1990 dud Havana.

In front of the camera, Pollack kept his acting career simmering with a lead role in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives in 1992.

In 1993, The Firm was a successful adaptation of the John Grisham thriller but the year was overshadowed by the death of Pollack's son in a plane crash in California.

Two years later the ill-advised remake of the romantic comedy Sabrina with Harrison Ford was a total flop.

In 1999, Pollack and Ford reunited for Random Hearts, a drama about a man and a woman (Kristin Scott Thomas) who discover that their partners - who died in a plane crash - were lovers.

The same year Pollack also played a sleazy businessman in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut alongside Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

In the early years of the new millennium, Pollack worked almost exclusively as a producer on the likes of The Talented Mr Ripley, Iris, The Quiet American and the George Clooney thriller Michael Clayton.

In 2005, he returned to directing with the conspiracy thriller The Interpreter, starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn.

He was last in the director's chair for the documentary Sketches of Frank Gerhry, a film about the celebrated American architect and a friend of Pollack.

His lact acting role was playing Patrick Dempsey's father in the rom-com Made of Honour.

After being diagnosed with cancer ten months before, he died surrounded by his family in Los Angeles on May 26 2008.