From his directorial debut with Sidney Poitier in 1965 to The Interpreter with Nicole Kidman 40 years later, Sydney Pollack never made a film without a major star.

Yesterday, after news of his death from cancer at the age of 73, some of Hollywood’s biggest names paid tribute to a director, producer and gifted character actor whose belief in star appeal set his films apart in an age of special effects-driven blockbusters.

Curly-haired and almost 6ft 2in tall, Pollack was best known for two wildly different films made back-to-back in the early 1980s: Tootsie, a cross-dressing New York comedy with Dustin Hoffman, and Out of Africa, for which he won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director and which starred Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and the widescreen Kenyan landcape.

George Clooney, who acted opposite Pollack in one of his last roles in Michael Clayton, said: “Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better. A tip of the hat to a class act. He’ll be missed terribly.”

Barbra Streisand, whom Pollack directed in The Way We Were, praised him as “a great actor’s director . . . a very good friend, someone I even shared secrets with”.

Poitier, who starred in The Slender Thread in 1965, said: “He wound up leaving an amazing mark on the American film industry.”

No one in Hollywood was more closely entwined with Pollack’s fortunes than Redford. Both men made their big screen acting debuts playing soldiers in the low-budget 1962 film War Hunt.

Redford went on to make seven films under Pollack’s direction, including The Way We Were and Three Days of the Condor, as well as Out of Africa. “Sydney and my relationship both professionally and personally covers 40 years,” he told The New York Times. “It’s too personal to express in a soundbite.”

Pollack once spoke of his preference for working with big stars in an interview with the same newspaper in 1982. “Stars are like thoroughbreds,” he said. “Yes, it’s a little more dangerous with them. They are more temperamental.

“You have to be careful because you can be thrown. But when they do what they do best – whatever it is that’s made them a star – it’s really exciting.”

Burt Lancaster, Anne Bancroft, Jane Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Charles Bronson, Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford were among the stars with whom he worked.

Six essential movies

They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (1969) Bleak drama about competitive dance marathons in the Depression with Jane Fonda. Scored 9 Oscar nominations

Three Days of the Condor (1975) Paranoid Watergate-era thriller with Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway

Tootsie (1982) Directed and acted opposite Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange in sparkling cross-dressing comedy

Out of Africa (1985) Oscar-laden epic with Meryl Streep and Redford based on Karen Blixen’s memoir of love in colonial Kenya

The Interpreter (2005) Directed Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn in an intelligent thriller about an African despot who bears a suspicious resemblance to Robert Mugabe

Michael Clayton (2007) Pollack did not direct but gives one of his finest screen performances as George Clooney’s grizzled boss in this sharp modern thriller

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