And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing.
Sydney Pollack

Burt Lancaster was largely responsible for me becoming a director.
Sydney Pollack

But, I've made films in Japan, in Yugoslavia, all over Europe, all over the United States, Mexico, but not Hollywood.
Sydney Pollack

By that I mean, I think that it is true that politics and political heroes have to satisfy our need to be greater than mortal in some way, and that's led them into creating illusions, sound bites, focus groups that tell you what to do.
Sydney Pollack

Every single art form is involved in film, in a way.
Sydney Pollack

Film is a collective experience, as you know.
Sydney Pollack

For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don't know that George Washington would be a president today, I don't know that Abe Lincoln would, I don't know that Roosevelt would.
Sydney Pollack

I didn't believe that I'd ever be lucky enough to be able to make a living as an actor.
Sydney Pollack

I didn't grow up thinking of movies as film, or art, but as movies, something to do on a Saturday afternoon.
Sydney Pollack

I don't know about liberal bias, but people of a liberal mentality are probably attracted in greater numbers to the arts than people of a conservative mentality.
Sydney Pollack


I mean, certainly it's the single biggest event, I think, in terms of popular entertainment, or art even, if you say that, of the 20th Century. It's been film. It's the 20th Century's real art form.
Sydney Pollack

I mean, certainly writing, painting, photography, dance, architecture, there is an aspect of almost every art form that is useful and that merges into film in some way.
Sydney Pollack

I mean, I don't know anything else that I would try to do, but it's a very frustrating thing to do, because you are trying to take what's a fantasy in your head and make it live through the minds of 200 people.
Sydney Pollack

I mean, movies are like your kids or your fingers and toes or something, it's pretty hard to pick favorites.
Sydney Pollack

I mean, the truth of the matter is, I like the failures as much as I like the successes, it's only the world that doesn't like the failures.
Sydney Pollack

I personally have never made a movie in Hollywood, because I don't want to get up in my own bed and then go to the movie set, and then come home at night to my real life.
Sydney Pollack

I think it's a terrible shame that politics has become show business.
Sydney Pollack

I've produced my own films for twenty years now - it means I have to talk to less people.
Sydney Pollack

No, I never went to college. Always regretted it, always envied people who did.
Sydney Pollack

Reading a novel of a private experience, very, very different, the nature of it is very different.
Sydney Pollack