Times Square Gossip

Hollywood star Tom Cruise is paying a tribute to The Firm director Sydney Pollack, admitting he will "miss him dearly". Pollack died aged 73 yesterday, after a nine-month battle with cancer at his home in Pacific Palisades, in Los Angeles California. And Cruise, who worked with the director on 1993’s The Firm and Eyes Wide Shut in 1998, remembers the star as an unpretentious man. He says, "Throughout the years, unpretentious and never condescending, he shared with me what he loved about family, storytelling, food, flying and a great bottle of vino (wine)." Cruise also looks back fondly on their first meeting, when Pollack patiently answered an up-and-coming Cruise’s eager questions for six-hours, even though he was busy editing his comedy classic Tootsie. He explains, "I first met him while he was in the midst of editing Tootsie. I’d seen every one of his pictures and he generously took the meeting."He was a Renaissance man and a great friend. I will mis...

Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack of "Out of Africa" who achieved acclaim making popular, mainstream movies with A-list stars, including "The Way We Were" and "Tootsie," died today. He was 73. Pollack, who also was a producer and actor, died of cancer at his home in Pacific Palisades, according to Leslee Dart, his publicist and friend. "Out of Africa," the 1985 drama based on Danish author Isak Dinesen's experiences in Kenya during the early part of the 20th century and her romance with English big-game hunter-adventurer Denys Finch Hatton, earned Pollack two Academy Awards: as director and as producer of the film, which won the best picture Oscar.Pollack also received a best director Oscar nomination -- and a New York Film Critics Circle Award -- for "Tootsie," the 1982 comedy starring Dustin Hoffman as Michael Dorsey, an unemployed New York City actor who revives his career by transforming himself into a "woman...