Pollack was an American director, producer and actor. After graduating from high school in Indiana, he moved to New York where he studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre under Sanford Meisner’s mentorship. After two years in the military he returned to the same school in 1958 as a teacher. Also at that time he started to act in TV dramas and soon began working as a director of several episodes of different TV series. In the 1960s he made his directing debut with the feature film The Slender Thread (1960). His fifth film was the successful drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director. Afterwards he made the western Jeremiah Johnson (1972), the drama The Way We Were (1973), The Yakuza (1974) and the political thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975), which is regarded as one of his best films besides the comedy Tootsie (1982), which earned him another Oscar nomination. His romantic comedy Out of Africa (1985) won Oscars for Best Director and Best Film. His next film, also a romantic drama, Havana (1990), was his seventh and last collaboration with Robert Redford. They first met in 1962 on the set of the war drama War Hunt in which they both made their acting debuts. After the commercially unsuccessful Havana, Pollack directed the popular thriller The Firm (1993), romantic comedy Sabrina (1995), Random Hearts (1999) in which he also had a small role and his last film, thriller The Interpreter (2005). From the 1970s until the end of his life he remained an active producer. Along with another director, Anthony Minghella, he founded the production house Mirage Enterprises. Together they produced Iris (2001) by Richard Eyre, The Quiet American (2002) by Phillip Noyce, Minghella’s Cold Mountain (2003), Breaking and Entering (2006) and Pollack’s last film Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005), a documentary about the famous architect. He remained active right up to the end of his life, appearing in small but impressive roles and collaborating with directors such as Woody Allen, Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick.