Sydney Pollack Filmography

Born:: July 1, 1934 in Lafayette, IN
Occupation:: Actor, Co-producer, Director, Executive Producer, Producer
Biography:: Sydney Pollack was born to first generation Russian-Jewish Americans on July 1, 1934. After graduating from his Indiana high school, he went to New York and became a student at the Neighborhood Playhouse, a celebrated Greenwich Village school, where he studied under Sanford Meisner. He served two...Read More

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The Silver Linings Playbook

Crew: Producer

Synopsis: The quirky, humorous feature The Silver Linings Playbook concerns a man released from a sanitarium after a mental breakdown. Though he feels bound and determined to look on the bright side of things -- the "silver linings" of the title -- he also experiences a break from reality, sinking into a Read More

1/1/09
Made of Honor

Actors: Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin McKidd, Kathleen Quinlan, Sydney Pollack

Synopsis: A handsome and successful bachelor is taken aback when his dream girl asks him to be the "maid" of honor in her upcoming wedding in this romantic comedy starring Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan. Tom (Dempsey) and Hannah (Monaghan) have been best friends for years. Though all the hard times Read More

5/2/08
Leatherheads

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce, Peter Gerety

Synopsis: Good Night, and Good Luck director George Clooney pulls double duty once again in this sports-oriented romantic comedy set against the formation of professional football in the 1920s. Dodge Connelly (Clooney) is a brash and handsome gridiron giant who is equally comfortable leading his team in a Read More

4/4/08
Margaret

Crew: Producer

Actors: Anna Paquin, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, Jean Reno, Matthew Broderick

1/1/08
Recount

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Kevin Spacey, Bob Balaban, Ed Begley, Jr., Laura Dern, John Hurt

Synopsis: Kevin Spacey and Bob Balaban headline Austin Powers director Jay Roach's all-star docudrama examining the events surrounding the most controversial presidential election in United States history. The highest office in the country is up for grabs, and the fate of the free world may hang in the Read More

2008
The Reader

Crew: Producer

Actors: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Bruno Ganz

Synopsis: Director Stephen Daldry (The Hours) helms this adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's best-selling novel in this tale of a man's (Ralph Fiennes) sexual encounters with a woman (Kate Winslet) in post-World War II Germany. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide Read More

1/1/08
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Crew: Producer

Actors: Jill Scott, Anika Noni Rose, Lucian Msamati, David Oyelowo, Idris Elba

Synopsis: Academy Award-winning filmmaker Anthony Minghella teams with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Richard Curtis to adapt author Alexander McCall Smith's best-selling series of novels in this film concerning Botswana's only female-owned detective agency. The first feature film shot entirely in the Read More

2008
Michael Clayton

Crew: Producer

Actors: George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack, Michael O'Keefe

Synopsis: Michael Clayton (George Clooney) handles all of the dirty work for a major New York law firm, arranging top-flight legal services and skirting through loopholes for ethically questionable clients. But when a fellow "fixer" decides to turn on the very firm they were hired to clean up for, Clayton Read More

10/5/07
Avenue Montaigne

Actors: Cécile De France, Valérie Lemercier, Albert Dupontel, Claude Brasseur, Dani

Synopsis: A fresh-faced orphan from the provinces labors away at the last old-fashioned café on Avenue Montaigne as the Paris theater elite prepare for the biggest night of the year in Jet Lag director Danièle Thompson's whirlwind comedy of intersecting lives. Jessica (Cecile De France) may have been Read More

2/16/07
James Taylor: One Man Band

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: James Taylor

2007
Breaking and Entering

Crew: Producer

Actors: Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, Martin Freeman, Ray Winstone

Synopsis: A petty thief is the link between a well-to-do businessman and a single mother struggling to get by in his edgy, emotional drama. Will Francis (Jude Law) is a successful landscape architect who runs an upscale business with his friend Sandy (Martin Freeman) in the King's Cross section of London, a Read More

12/15/06
Catch a Fire

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Tim Robbins, Derek Luke, Bonnie Henna, Mncedisi Shabangu, Tumisho K. Masha

Synopsis: An apolitical South African oil-refinery worker and soccer coach is forced into terrorism as a means of fighting back against the brutality of the apartheid regime in director Phillip Noyce's dramatic look at the life of one-time political prisoner and freedom fighter Patrick Chamusso. In the Read More

10/27/06
Sketches of Frank Gehry

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Frank Gehry, Chuck Arnoldi, Sydney Pollack, Edward Ruscha, Mildred Friedman, Michael Ovitz, Philip Johnson, Craig Webb

Synopsis: Acclaimed film director Sydney Pollack took a five-year break from the realms of fiction to assemble a lovingly crafted tribute to longtime friend and acclaimed architect Frank Gehry in this documentary born from the sketches of its talented subject. A notoriously shy craftsman whose impressive Read More

5/12/06
John Ford/John Wayne: The Filmmaker and the Legend

Actors: Sydney Pollack

Synopsis: The enduring relationship between two of the biggest names in Hollywood history is explored in this 2006 documentary from director Sam Pollard. Produced for PBS's American Masters series, the film combines interviews with clips from the fourteen films the John Ford and John Wayne collaborated on Read More

2006
The Interpreter

Crew: Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Jesper Christensen, Yvan Attal

Synopsis: An overheard conversation leads a woman into a dark world of deadly intrigue in this political thriller. Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman) is an African émigré who works as an interpreter at the United Nations. One of the languages she understands is Ku, a dialect spoken in her home country of Matobo. Read More

4/22/05
Boffo! Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters

Actors: George Clooney, Danny DeVito, Peter Bogdanovich, David Brown, Richard Dreyfuss

Synopsis: Take a walk on the fine line between box-office blockbusters and instantly forgettable bombs as Oscar and Emmy-winning producer/director Bill Couturie sets out to explore just what separates such high-profile hits as Jaws from such room-clearing disasters as Howard the Duck. Executive produced by Read More

2005
Dream Jets

Synopsis: Take to the sky with the rich and famous as you step aboard the most exuberant personal jets ever to grace the clouds in this high flying video that shows just why the skyways of today may be the highways of tomorrow. The celebrity customers of an exclusive design team demand aircraft that are as Read More

2004
Cold Mountain

Crew: Producer

Actors: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Eileen Atkins, Brendan Gleeson, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Charles Frazier, Anthony Minghella's star-studded Cold Mountain is a sweeping tale set in the final days of the American Civil War. Jude Law stars as Inman, a young soldier who, despite an injury, is struggling to make his way home to Cold Mountain, NC, where his beloved Ada (Nicole Kidman Read More

12/25/03
A Decade Under the Influence

Actors: Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Ellen Burstyn

Synopsis: In the late '60s, American culture experienced a period of change as the youth movement challenged conventional attitudes about politics, sex, drugs, and gender issues, while the advancement of the Vietnam War found many citizens questioning the actions and wisdom of their government for the first Read More

4/25/03
Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin

Actors: Sydney Pollack, Charles Chaplin, Johnny Depp, Robert Downey, Jr., Woody Allen, Milos Forman, Marcel Marceau

Synopsis: American film historian and author Richard Schickel directs the documentary Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin. Schickel offers an exploration into Chaplin's life, from his childhood in London until his death in 1977. The film also contains insight on his multifaceted film career and Read More

2003
The Quiet American

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Do Hai Yen, Rade Serbedzija

Synopsis: Graham Greene's allegorical novel about America's role in the Vietnam conflict, and how it was perceived by the rest of the world, is brought to the screen for the second time in this adaptation directed by Phillip Noyce. Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) is a British journalist who in 1952 is Read More

11/22/02
Fidel

Actors: Vlasta Vrana

Synopsis: Fidel Castro is one of the world's best known and most recognizable political leaders, but he is also among the most mysterious. While Castro became a household name after overthrowing the rule of Fulgenico Batista and became the head of Cuba's new socialist government, little is known of his Read More

10/18/02
Heaven

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Remo Girone, Stefania Rocca, Matthis Sbargia

Synopsis: German filmmaker Tom Tykwer made his English-language debut with this feature, which was adapted from a screenplay co-authored by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski. Philippa (Cate Blanchett) is a British schoolteacher living in Italy, whose husband fell victim to a drug overdose, as have several of Read More

10/4/02
Changing Lanes

Actors: Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, Toni Collette, Sydney Pollack, William Hurt

Synopsis: Director Roger Michell follows up the hit romantic comedy Notting Hill (1999) with this thought-provoking thriller. Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson star, respectively, as Gavin Banek and Doyle Gibson, two New York men whose lives become accidentally intertwined in a Good Friday fender bender on Read More

4/12/02
Birthday Girl

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Nicole Kidman, Ben Chaplin, Vincent Cassel, Mathieu Kassovitz, Kate Evans

Synopsis: A man looking for love gets more than he bargained for when he chooses his prospective wife on the internet in this dark comedy. The manager of a bank in a small British community (Ben Chaplin) decides that he's in need of long-term companionship, and through an on-line marriage broker called From Read More

2/1/02
The Majestic

Actors: Jim Carrey, Martin Landau, Bob Balaban, Gerry Black, Brent Briscoe, Karl Bury

Synopsis: Director Frank Darabont created this Frank Capra-inspired drama based on a screenplay by his friend and one-time schoolmate Michael Sloane. Jim Carrey stars as Pete Appleton, a screenwriter in the Hollywood of the 1950s. Pete's on top of the world with his first motion picture "Sand Pirates of the Read More

12/21/01
Iris

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Bonneville, Penelope Wilton

Synopsis: Based on a pair of memoirs by her husband John Bayley, this biographical portrait of writer Iris Murdoch stars both Judi Dench and Kate Winslet as the philosophical author at different stages of her life. When the young Iris (Winslet) meets fellow student Bayley (Hugh Bonneville) at Oxford, he's a Read More

12/15/01
Blow Dry

Crew: Executive Producer, Producer

Actors: Alan Rickman, Natasha Richardson, Rachel Griffiths, Rachael Leigh Cook, Josh Hartnett

Synopsis: When the tiny burgh of Keighley lands the rights to host the annual British hairdressing championships, practically every city in the United Kingdom is represented in the competition -- except Keighley itself. It seems the event is team-oriented, and the only suitable local contestants had a huge Read More

3/9/01
Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures

Actors: Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Jack Nicholson

Synopsis: Stanley Kubrick was one of the most acclaimed and controversial filmmakers of his generation, but he was also an intensely private man who rarely gave interviews and produced most of his films under a shroud of secrecy, which tended to foster a great deal of rumor and speculation about his working Read More

2001
Up at the Villa

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Kristin Scott Thomas, Sean Penn, Anne Bancroft, James Fox, Jeremy Davies

Synopsis: A woman left alone by the death of her husband finds her love life has become suddenly and dangerously complicated in this drama. Mary Panton (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a British woman living in Italy in 1938 who has been financially ruined by the death of her husband. Edgar (James Fox), an aging Read More

5/5/00
The Talented Mr. Ripley

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Synopsis: After the Oscar-winning The English Patient, writer/director Anthony Minghella attempted another tricky literary adaptation with The Talented Mr. Ripley, which features heartthrob Matt Damon cast against type as a psychopathic bisexual murderer. Tom Ripley (Damon) is a bright and charismatic Read More

12/25/99
Random Hearts

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Charles S. Dutton, Bonnie Hunt, Dennis Haysbert, Sydney Pollack, Richard Jenkins, Paul Guilfoyle, Peter Coyote, Bill Cobbs

Synopsis: Two people who've known the pain of loss and the sting of betrayal are brought together under trying circumstances in this romantic drama. Dutch van den Broeck (Harrison Ford) is a police detective based in Washington D.C. whose wife works for an upscale department store; flying to Miami on Read More

10/8/99
Eyes Wide Shut

Actors: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Sydney Pollack, Marie Richardson, Rade Serbedzija, Todd Field, Vinessa Shaw

Synopsis: The final work of legendary director Stanley Kubrick, who died within a week of completing the edit, stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, at the time Hollywood's most bankable celebrity couple, and was shot on a open-ended schedule (finally totaling over 400 days), with closed sets in London Read More

7/16/99
The Last Movie: Stanley Kubrick & "Eyes Wide Shut"

Actors: John Boorman, Tom Cruise, Jan Harlan

Synopsis: Produced by the British television network Channel 4, this documentary takes a look at the life and work of acclaimed filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, with special emphasis on the production of what proved to be his final film, Eyes Wide Shut. Family, friends, and collaborators of the great director Read More

1999
A Civil Action

Actors: Kathy Bates, John Travolta, Robert Duvall, Tony Shalhoub, William H. Macy, Zeljko Ivanek

Synopsis: Directed by Schindler's List screenwriter Steve Zaillian, this courtroom drama is based on a true story and non-fiction book by Jonathan Harr. The case revolves around an incident in 1979 in East Woburn, MA, where two drinking wells supplying water to the town were found to be contaminated with Read More

12/25/98
Poodle Springs

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: James Caan, Dina Meyer, David Keith, Tom Bower, Brian Cox

Synopsis: For this TV movie, Bob Rafelson directed James Caan as famous shamus Philip Marlowe. The novel Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) was writing during the year of his death remained unfinished until it was completed 30 years later by Spenser author Robert Parker. The British-based, Czech-born Read More

1998
Sliding Doors

Crew: Producer

Actors: Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hannah, John Lynch, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Zara Turner

Synopsis: British actor Peter Howitt wrote and directed this British romantic comedy-drama with a "road not taken" premise recalling the 1921 play If by Lord Dunsany (1878-1957), Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946), and O.Henry's short story Roads of Destiny (1909). Howitt's storyline branches in two Read More

1998
Mad About You: Cheating on Sheila

Actors: Louis Zorich

Synopsis: Dissatisfied with their regular therapist, Sheila (Mo Gaffney), Paul and Jamie Buchman (Paul Reiser, Helen Hunt) try out a new shrink named Sydney (played by Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack). Unfortunately, the cost of this switch cannot merely be counted in dollars -- though Paul certain Read More

1998
Independent's Day

Synopsis: The Sundance Channel produced this guided tour through the world of independent films and filmmakers, tossing out the statistic that the movement has escalated from some 50 films in 1985, to 800 in 1997. Interview segments include Sundance fest director Geoffrey Gilmore, fest programmer Bob Hawk Read More

1998
The Directors: Sydney Pollack

Synopsis: As actor, director, and executive producer, Sydney Pollack has been involved with some of Hollywood's most acclaimed works including Tootsie, Out of Africa, and Three Days of the Condor. This video profile highlights his life and career. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

1997
Never Again, Forever

Crew: Executive Producer

1996
American Cinema: The Hollywood Style

Synopsis: Originally produced for PBS, the American Cinema series examines what is probably the leading American art form: film. Chock-full of clips from important films, and interviews with the men and women who made them, each episode is an in-depth look at an important facet of the history of American Read More

1995
Sabrina

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond, Greg Kinnear, John Wood, Nancy Marchand

Synopsis: A remake of a 1954 Billy Wilder romance, this updated version of the play Sabrina Fair was directed by Sydney Pollack. Julia Ormond stars as Sabrina Fairchild, the daughter of a kindly chauffeur (John Wood) at the Long Island estate of the upper-crust Larrabee family. Sabrina has grown up Read More

1995
Sense and Sensibility

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Gemma Jones, Elizabeth Spriggs, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, James Fleet, Greg Wise

Synopsis: The recipient of seven Oscar® nominations, this film version of Jane Austen's classic 1811 novel stars Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood. With her mother and sisters, Elinor struggles financially after the death of her father, who bequeathed the Dashwood estate to his oafish son by an earlier Read More

1995
Frasier: The Candidate

Synopsis: An upcoming election causes a rift between Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and Martin (John Mahoney) when Frasier, turned off by the platform of Martin's favorite candidate, decides to support the man's opponent, Phil Patterson (Boyd Gaines). At first, Frasier's choice seems to be a model of logic and Read More

1994
The Firm

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, Terry Kinney, Ed Harris

Synopsis: In this drama, based on the best-selling novel by John Grisham, Mitch McDeer (Tom Cruise) is a young man from a poor Southern family who has struggled through Harvard Law School to graduate fifth in his class. Mitch is entertaining offers from major firms in New York and Chicago, but when Read More

1993
Flesh and Bone

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, James Caan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scott Wilson

Synopsis: Small-time Texas businessman Arlis Sweeney (Dennis Quaid) can never shake the memory of his father's (James Caan) wasted life. What particularly sticks in his craw is the murder committed years earlier by his father and a teenaged accomplice. While going through the by-rote motions of his job (he Read More

1993
Searching for Bobby Fischer

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Joe Mantegna, Max Pomeranc, Joan Allen, Ben Kingsley, Laurence Fishburne

Synopsis: Searching for Bobby Fischer was inspired by the life of chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, as written by his father Fred Waitzkin. Josh (Max Pomeranc) is a "regular kid" who begins evincing signs of being a genius at chess. His father (Joe Mantegna) encourages this, hoping that it won't fundamentally Read More

1993
Husbands and Wives

Actors: Woody Allen, Judy Davis, Mia Farrow, Sydney Pollack, Juliette Lewis

Synopsis: One of Woody Allen's most seemingly biographical films, Husbands and Wives opens with upper-middle class Manhattan couple Sally (Judy Davis) and Jack (Sydney Pollack) announcing to their best friends, the Roths, that they are splitting up. Gabe Roth (Allen) and his wife Judy (Mia Farrow) are taken Read More

9/18/92
Death Becomes Her

Actors: Meryl Streep, Bruce Willis, Goldie Hawn, Isabella Rossellini, Ian Ogilvy

Synopsis: High-concept director Robert Zemeckis applies his usual polish -- helped by an equally adept cast -- for this surprisingly gruesome and extremely funny black comedy. The film begins with narcissistic actress Madeline (Meryl Streep) stealing the latest in a series of potential fiancées, wimpy Read More

7/31/92
Leaving Normal

Crew: Producer

Actors: Christine Lahti, Meg Tilly, Lenny Von Dohlen, Patrika Darbo, James Gammon, Maury Chaykin

Synopsis: Meg Tilly and Christine Lahti star in this female buddy story that recalls the earlier Thelma and Louise. Marianne (Meg Tilly) is a quiet waif who has just walked out on her abusive husband. Darly (Christine Lahti) is a brassy waitress who was a ballsy stripper using the stage name Pillow Talk. Read More

4/29/92
The Player

Actors: Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Gallagher

Synopsis: Robert Altman takes a scalpel to Hollywood ethics in the 1990s (or the lack thereof) in his acidic satire The Player, adapted from Michael Tolkin's novel. (Tolkin also wrote the screenplay.) The film concerns a sleek and smooth Hollywood studio executive who starts receiving death threats from a Read More

4/10/92
Dead Again

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi, Robin Williams

Synopsis: Set in contemporary Los Angeles as well as the Los Angeles of the 1940s, Dead Again explores a romance between two star-crossed lovers -- and the doomed passion they shared in their last lifetime. Los Angeles detective Mike Church (Kenneth Branagh) comes to the aid of mute, amnesia-victim Grace (Emma Thompson Read More

8/23/91
King Ralph

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: John Goodman, Peter O'Toole, John Hurt, Camille Coduri, Richard Griffiths

Synopsis: Sometimes a family title, among the nobility of England, goes to the "collateral" heirs -- people not in the direct line of decent, like cousins, great-nephews and the like. On rare occasions, these people are not even aware that they are about to be elevated to the House of Lords, and they have Read More

2/15/91
Havana

Crew: Co-producer, Director

Actors: Robert Redford, Lena Olin, Alan Arkin, Tomas Milian, Raul Julia

Synopsis: A cynical gambler reluctantly comes to the aid of a mysterious beauty in this interpolation of Casablanca and the real-life Cuban revolution. Big-stakes American gambler Jack Weil (Robert Redford) is comfortable in the anything-goes Havana of 1958. But with Fidel Castro out in the wilderness Read More

12/12/90
White Palace

Crew: Producer

Actors: Susan Sarandon, James Spader, Jason Alexander, Kathy Bates, Eileen Brennan

Synopsis: Screenwriters Ted Tally and Alvin Sargent adapted the novel by Glenn Savan into this intelligent comedy-drama about a May-December romance where the woman is the senior partner. James Spader is Max Baron, a 27-year-old St. Louis advertising executive who has completely shut himself off from the Read More

10/19/90
Presumed Innocent

Crew: Co-producer

Actors: Harrison Ford,