Director-actor Sydney Pollack, left, appears with Dustin Hoffman in the hit 1982 comedy, Tootsie. (Columbia Pictures/Associated Press)

For a distinguished Hollywood director, Sydney Pollack directed comparatively few films. Yet at the height of his success, in the 1970s and ’80s, he had a knack for making iconic movies that fit perfectly with the zeitgeist of their time — and continue to be cherished by audiences.

Pollack, who died May 26 of cancer at age 73, was able to take big issues and big stars and put them together in highly entertaining pictures. The best example is also his best film: Tootsie. This witty 1982 comedy about gender roles starred Dustin Hoffman as an aggressive actor who, disguised in drag, transforms himself into a feminist heroine. But Pollack worked that same successful combination in other movies, too, from the bleak, Vietnam-era They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? to the Watergate-inspired Three Days of the Condor.

Pollack wasn’t an auteur like Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese. An actor himself, he was an actor’s director, who deftly guided stars like Hoffman and Jane Fonda through career-defining performances. He was also a skilled screen chemist, whose canny star concoctions – Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were, Redford and Meryl Streep in Out of Africa – bubbled up into resonant romantic dramas whose very titles still evoke ”misty water-coloured memories” for many viewers.

Pollack got his start as an actor on stage and television in the 1950s and early ‘60s, but soon moved behind the lens. It wasn’t until Tootsie, in which he played Hoffman’s exasperated agent, that he began acting again regularly. Although he handled substantial roles in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, more often he popped up in small but flavorful character parts, as Will Truman’s philandering father on TV’s Will and Grace or George Clooney’s hardboiled boss in Michael Clayton, one of many films he also produced.

In recent years, Pollack was almost better known as an actor and producer than as a director. But it’s as a filmmaker that he deserves to be remembered. He helmed 21 features over five decades. Here are the 10 most notable:

Anne Bancroft stars in the 1965 drama The Slender Thread, Pollock's first feature film. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Slender Thread (1965)

After earning directing credits on top ‘60s TV series like The Fugitive and Ben Casey, Pollack made his feature debut with this tense drama about a black crisis-centre volunteer (Sidney Poitier) who tries to save a suicidal white woman (Anne Bancroft) on the other end of the phone. Like many of Pollack’s subsequent films, it touched on the burning issues of the day – in this case, racial prejudice.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969)

A post-Barbarella Jane Fonda established herself as a serious dramatic actress in Pollack’s screen adaptation of Horace McCoy’s 1935 novel about the desperate participants in a Depression-era dance marathon. Capturing America’s cynical mood at the height of the Vietnam War, it’s one of the director’s darkest films.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

Pollack’s work with Robert Redford helped establish the actor as a major star. After Redford co-starred in the director’s 1966 film of Tennessee Williams’ This Property Is Condemned, the two re-teamed for this 19th-century wilderness adventure featuring Redford as a disillusioned soldier turned mountain man. (More shades of Vietnam.)

The Way We Were (1973)

Pollack turned his hand to bittersweet romance with great aplomb in this postwar drama where love tries – and fails – to overcome class, race, ideology and moral character. Redford plays the beautiful but self-centred WASP Hubbell Gardner, who falls for smart but gawky Jewish girl Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand). Babs also sings the Oscar-winning title song.

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

In this hit political thriller, Pollack returned to the present day and tapped into post-Watergate mistrust. Redford returns, this time as a CIA researcher who becomes a hunted man after accidentally undercovering a conspiracy within the agency involving foreign oil. Critic Roger Ebert found its scenario "all too believable" when it was released; it’s no less credible today.

Absence of Malice (1981)

Having questioned government probity, Pollack set his sights on media ethics. Absence of Malice stars Paul Newman, in a great late-career performance, as a businessman unjustly smeared by a scoop-hungry reporter (Sally Field), who then finds a way to exact his revenge.

Tootsie (1982)

In some ways an atypical Pollack film – a comedy, a gimmick movie – this turned out to be his finest two hours. Then again, perhaps it took his dramatic sensibility to bring out the poignant irony in this tale of gender and identity. Hoffman’s hilarious tour de force as Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels is backed by a first-rate ‘80s supporting cast: Jessica Lange, Charles Durning, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, Bill Murray and Pollack himself. Tootsie made it to the American Film Institute’s roster of top 100 movies – at No. 62, between Hitchcock’s Vertigo and John Ford’s Stagecoach.

Meryl Streep, left, and Robert Redford star in Pollack's 1985 Oscar-winning romance Out of Africa. (Universal Studios)

Out of Africa (1985)

Although he had been nominated for Academy Awards three times by the mid-‘80s, the gold statuette continued to elude Pollack. Then along came this lush romance, set in colonial-era Kenya and based on the life of Danish writer Isak Dinesen, a.k.a. Karen Blixen. Streep starred as Blixen and Redford was her lover, big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton. The movie won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Pollack. The scene in which Redford washes Streep’s hair while reciting Coleridge has become a classic of high-toned sensuality.

The Firm (1993)

The innocent man who uncovers a conspiracy was a favourite theme of Pollack’s. In this legal thriller based on John Grisham’s novel, Tom Cruise stars as a newly minted lawyer who discovers his reputable firm is harbouring some ugly secrets. You can credit/blame Pollack for being the first to put a Grisham bestseller onscreen.

Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)

After a string of forgettable features in the late 1990s and early 2000s – Sabrina, Random Hearts, The Interpreter – Pollack released his first documentary. The change did him good. Here, the director sits down with Gehry, the Canadian-born superstar architect and his longtime friend, for an intimate chat that explores the nature of creativity.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.