Sydney Pollack

When you first start out, you want to be Fellini, or you want to be Bergman.

— Sydney Pollack

You hope that the responsibility of making movies will fall into the hands of essentially moral people.

— Sydney Pollack

The very reasons sometimes that you make a film are the reasons for its failure.

— Sydney Pollack

The marketing of anything is full of exploitation and lies and hype.

— Sydney Pollack

Audiences want to feel something intense, quickly, without wasting a lot of time.

— Sydney Pollack

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

— Sydney Pollack

All the movies I've made are essentially character-driven movies about people that I'm interested in.

— Sydney Pollack

I tend to be what I would call more progressive than conservative, but I think either extreme is excessive.

— Sydney Pollack

It would be a great vacation to act in a movie if I weren't directing it. But to do it while you're…

— Sydney Pollack

At some point during the filmmaking process, you lose objectivity, and you need the eyes of someone who understands the process and…

— Sydney Pollack

The problem with filming something is that we struggle desperately to make three dimensions out of two dimensions. It can't be done.

— Sydney Pollack

I'd get bored if I... if I had to do a movie, and there was no love story in it, I would…

— Sydney Pollack

Well, there's no question that a good script is an absolutely essential, maybe the essential thing for a movie.

— Sydney Pollack

My strength is with actors. I think I'm good at working with them to get the best performances, at seeing what it…

— Sydney Pollack

The dance that happens, between actor and director, is a very delicate thing...it's why people tend to work together on many films…

— Sydney Pollack

Beginnings and endings are not interesting; audiences want the high point, which means you've got to get to it and get to…

— Sydney Pollack

For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving…

— Sydney Pollack

Relationship films are political. If a woman is sitting in a waiting room in an office and a man walks in and…

— Sydney Pollack

There isn't any question that Hollywood is profit driven. Anybody that thinks it isn't is a fool. It's a business. Hollywood was…

— Sydney Pollack

I have to have a working knowledge of light, and optics, film emulsions and their properties, and lenses, otherwise I can't create…

— Sydney Pollack

I see my job as trying to entertain you, to be balanced in some way, and morally responsible. I don't want to…

— Sydney Pollack

With a movie you're creating from the beginning this particular work, let's not call it work of art, because very few movies…

— Sydney Pollack

All films are political, whether they mean to be or not. Star Wars is political. As soon as you have conflict, which…

— Sydney Pollack

Like a lot of New Yorkers, I assumed that I knew all about the U.N. I was shocked to find out it's…

— Sydney Pollack

When I work, I think mainly in terms of dramatic choices.

— Sydney Pollack

I remembered myself as an unpopular and rather sad kid.

— Sydney Pollack

It's always interesting to play people different from yourself, it would be boring for me to play myself.

— Sydney Pollack

It's hard for me to fall in love with a piece of material enough to want to direct it.

— Sydney Pollack

No country could claim to be civilized if its legal system weren't available to everyone in it.

— Sydney Pollack

South Bend is a nice town, but you know that phrase - 'I was homesick even when I was home.'

— Sydney Pollack

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

— Sydney Pollack

If I'm lucky, in my wildest dreams I can make a picture every three years.

— Sydney Pollack

Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.

— Sydney Pollack

I don't know what the creative process is. I don't know how to trick it into starting or how to egg it…

— Sydney Pollack

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

— Sydney Pollack

You don't normally do another presentation of All About Eve. You do one All About Eve, and that's it.

— Sydney Pollack

I do tend to wake up in the middle of the night convinced I've made a disaster.

— Sydney Pollack

Obviously its a good feeling to know that something you've done has lasted.

— Sydney Pollack

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

— Sydney Pollack

What I really want to do is produce. There isn’t much patience with a slow developing story line anymore.

— Sydney Pollack