Sydney Pollack AP PHOTO

Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay who achieved commercial success and critical acclaim with the gender-bending comedy Tootsie and the period drama Out of Africa while often dabbling as a television and movie actor, has died. He was 73.

Pollack died of cancer May 26 at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, surrounded by family. Pollack had been diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago.

Pollack worked with and gained the respect of Hollywood's best actors, including Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, in a long career that reached prominence in the 1970s and 1980s.