May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Sydney Pollack, the actor, producer and Academy Award-winning director of ``Tootsie'' and ``Out of Africa'' who used love stories, politics and humor to explore loss and human frailty, has died. He was 73.

Pollack died yesterday at his Los Angeles home after battling cancer, Leslee Dart, a spokeswoman for the family, said in a telephone interview. Pollack is survived by his wife, Claire, two daughters, a brother and six grandchildren.

Pollack excelled at serious, sometimes melancholy movies that explored relationships strained by emotional and cultural differences.

The connection between man and woman is ``a metaphor for everything else in life,'' he told Newsweek in 1985. In a 1990 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said he was drawn to ``love stories in which the obstacle is too great to finally be overcome.''

Though a comedy, his biggest hit, ``Tootsie'' (1982) took an earnest look at gender equality by following a male actor who finds success by posing as a woman. Other movies took on press freedom and responsibility (``Absence of Malice''), lost love and the personal damage caused by McCarthyism and blacklisting (``The Way We Were'') and the dirty details of covert intelligence operations (``Three Days of the Condor'').

Pollack was in the vanguard of innovative American film directors, including Sidney Lumet and John Frankenheimer, who became disillusioned in the 1960s with what Pollack called the ``straight-line melodramatic'' fare Hollywood studios were turning out, Janet L. Meyer wrote in her 1998 book, ``Sydney Pollack: A Critical Filmography.''

Fellini, Truffaut

As an alternative, Pollack said he drew on the work of European directors, such as Federico Fellini and Francois Truffaut, whose films explored a single event through the reactions of multiple characters.

Pollack was widely hailed as an actor's director, one who worked closely with his cast to find the emotions behind their characters. Twelve actors were nominated for Academy Awards for performances in his films.

He directed Hollywood's top stars, including Robert Redford seven times, Harrison Ford and Jane Fonda twice each, plus Meryl Streep, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Natalie Wood and Sidney Poitier.

Nominated three times for the Academy Award for best directing, Pollack won on his third try for ``Out of Africa'' (1985).

``Tootsie,'' voted by the American Film Institute as the second-funniest movie ever -- behind only ``Some Like It Hot'' (1959), another movie about men dressing as women -- gave new life to Pollack's acting career even as it cemented his spot as one of America's great directors.

`Silly, Stupid'

``It was always fun for me to hide in the back of a theater and watch `Tootsie' with an audience and hear them laugh,'' Pollack said in a 2006 online chat hosted by washingtonpost.com.

He initially turned down the gender-bending comedy as ``silly, stupid,'' according to Meyer's book. He signed on as director after working on the script and finding what he considered a compelling theme -- a man, seeing the world through a woman's perspective, becomes a better man.

Hoffman starred in the movie as an argumentative and struggling actor who lands a role, and a new public identity, as a woman. He urged a reluctant Pollack -- who hadn't acted in 20 years -- to take the added responsibility of appearing on-screen in the role of the actor's agent.

Funniest Exchanges

Pollack relented, and the antagonistic scenes between him and Hoffman provided some of the movie's funniest exchanges.

In an interview for the 1999 book ``Playing to the Camera,'' Hoffman said he wanted Pollack for the role because their real- life battles for creative control were generating the same tension needed in the movie.

``Pollack's refusal to see me in any role but that of an actor was somewhat paternalistic,'' said Hoffman, who had played key roles in creating the movie and getting it made. ``I think that some directors are close-minded about what an actor can contribute.''

For his part, Pollack long maintained that reports of discord with Hoffman were overblown.

``Tootsie'' was nominated for 10 Academy Awards but landed only one Oscar -- Jessica Lange for supporting actress. Pollack lost in the directing category to Richard Attenborough, for ``Gandhi.''

Confessing his disappointment to Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel after the 1983 Oscar presentation, Pollack said he was becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of big-time directors --meaning, he got no respect.

Oscar Winner

He finally landed his trophy three years later for directing ``Out of Africa,'' which also won for best picture and in five other categories. The film, adapted from the 1937 memoir written pseudonymously by Danish Baroness Karen Blixen, tracked the obstacle-laden affair of two Western settlers in Africa, played by Streep and Redford.

Pollack told the San Jose Mercury News in 2006 that the movie posed a question he found compelling: ``Is it possible for two people, or two countries for that matter, to maintain every bit of their own individuality, give up nothing, and have a relationship?''

Born July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Indiana, Pollack was the son of first-generation Americans descended from Russian Jews. He grew up about 90 miles to the north in South Bend in a household infused with an appreciation for the arts. He said he absorbed a Midwestern ``suspicion of sophistication'' that he carried into his films. Pollack's brother Bernie became a costume designer -- he was costume supervisor on ``Tootsie'' --and his sister Sharon became a choreographer.

Pollack's mother, Rebecca, a pianist and singer, died when he was 16.

Interest in Theater

Pollack developed an interest in theater and performed in plays at South Bend Central High School. Though his father David, a pharmacist, urged him to study dentistry, Pollack moved to New York to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse, under the tutelage of Sanford Meisner, who would become a key mentor. At 19, Pollack became Meisner's assistant and began developing his own skills as an acting teacher.

He landed a few stage and television roles between 1954 and 1962, also spending two of those years in the U.S. Army.

In 1959, Frankenheimer, another student of Meisner, enlisted Pollack to coach child actors in his television production of ``The Turn of the Screw,'' based on the Henry James novel.

First Nomination

After moving his family to California in 1960, Pollack landed roles on episodes of ``Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' and ``The Twilight Zone.'' He continued working for Frankenheimer, coaching inexperienced actors for the 1961 film ``The Young Savages.''

The star of that movie, Burt Lancaster, introduced Pollack to Lew Wasserman, then an executive at Universal Studios, who agreed to hire Pollack for six months to observe the studio's workings.

Pollack's directorial debut was a 1961 episode of the television western series ``Shotgun Slade,'' according to Meyer. Pollack would focus almost exclusively on directing for years to come.

He won an Emmy for best director for the 1965-66 season of ``The Game,'' part of Bob Hope Chrysler Theater. Also in 1965 he directed his first feature film, ``The Slender Thread,'' about a student volunteer at a crisis center (Poitier) who tries to help a suicidal woman (Anne Bancroft).

Pollack earned his first Academy Award nomination for best director for his sixth picture, ``They Shoot Horses: Don't They?'' (1969), about desperate contestants in a Depression-era dance marathon.

Peak Years

The 1970s and '80s were the period of Pollack's most celebrated and profitable movie-making.

In ``Jeremiah Johnson'' (1972), Redford played a disgruntled 19th-century U.S. soldier who retreats into the mountains.

``The Way We Were'' (1973), starring Redford and Barbra Streisand as lovers divided by religion and politics, earned six Academy Award nominations.

Next came ``The Yakuza'' (1974), ``Three Days of the Condor,'' (1975), ``Bobby Deerfield'' (1977), ``The Electric Horseman'' (1979) and ``Absence of Malice'' (1981), for which Newman earned an Academy Award nomination as lead actor.

Following ``Tootsie'' and ``Out of Africa'', Pollack directed the poorly received ``Havana'' (1990), then ``The Firm'' (1993), ``Sabrina'' (1995), ``Random Hearts'' (1999), and ``The Interpreter'' (2005).

Pollack produced many of the films he directed. He also produced ``The Fabulous Baker Boys'' (1989), ``Searching for Bobby Fischer'' (1993), ``The Talented Mr. Ripley'' (1999) and ``Michael Clayton'' (2007).

Great Directors

After his return to acting in ``Tootsie,'' Pollack took movie roles under directors Robert Altman in ``The Player'' (1992), Woody Allen in ``Husbands and Wives'' (1992) and Stanley Kubrick in ``Eyes Wide Shut'' (1999). He said he chose roles in part to study other great directors.

He also appeared in hit TV shows ``Frasier,'' ``Mad About You,'' ``Will and Grace'' and ``The Sopranos.''

Pollack married Claire Griswold, an actress, in 1958. Their 34-year-old son, Steven, a student pilot, died in a 1993 plane crash near Santa Monica Airport.

A daughter, Rebecca Pollack-Parker, formerly was an executive at United Artists. Another daughter, Rachel Pollack Sorman, is a professional singer.

Pollack helped Redford found the Sundance Institute, the Park City, Utah-based nonprofit group that supports independent filmmakers and manages the annual Sundance Film Festival.

To contact the reporter on this story: Laurence Arnold in Washington at larnold4@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 27, 2008 03:08 EDT