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EXPLAINS
SYDNEY
POLLACK
Aor someone who has never felt he was “born to be a director”, Sydney Pollack could be regarded as some- thing of an over-achiever.
Now 66, Indiana-born Pollack can look back over 18 films – from They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and The Way We Were to Out Of Africa and Random Hearts – with a certain satis- faction about his lack-of-a-calling.
Pollack was giving the David Lean Lecture – actually, a spirited conversation with fellow film-maker Anthony Minghella on stage at the Princess Anne Theatre in January – when he offered a few vivid clues about his working life and Oscar-win- ning times.
Introducing Pollack, Minghella described him as “right in the centre of Hollywood”, a prolific producer and director who once ran a studio and someone who’s also been “father to many first-time film-makers.
Pollack, who grew up wanting to be an actor, blames Burt Lancaster for his eventual career path. A recent graduate of Sanford Meisner’s prestigious Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York, he was work- ing as a dialogue coach on John Frankenheimer’s The Young Savages when the burly star called him over.
“I was terrified of him at first,” Pollack recalled, “but then we started talking. Then he told me, ‘You ought
LOVE IS THE
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