Born Lafayette, Indiana, July 1, 1934.
Died Pacific Palisades, California, May 26, 2008, aged 73.
Hollywood director, producer and actor Sydney Pollack became a Torah student in the 1980s, writes Tom Tugend.
He joined his friend Barbra Streisand in a study circle of high-profile Hollywood Jews while the actress prepared for her role as a girl disguised as a yeshivah boy in the 1983 movie Yentl.
The group met twice a month for two years. “Sydney had some basic Jewish knowledge, but his strength lay in his penetrating, incisive mind,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, one of two rabbis leading the course.
His “concern for the principled life, love of arguments, desire to challenge people and make them think” infused his 20 feature films, including Out of Africa (1985), which gained him two Oscars as director and producer.
The son of Russian immigrants to the US, Sydney Pollack had an unhappy childhood. His parents divorced and his mother died when he was 16. His father could not afford to send him to medical or dental school.
Sydney studied acting in New York, served in the US army in the 1950s, and returned to teach acting in New York. He married one of his students in 1958.
Their son, Steven, was killed in a plane crash in 1993. He is survived by his wife, Claire, and two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel.