After half a century of directing that has earned him an Oscar for Out of Africa and nominations for Tootsie and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Sydney Pollack has reinvented himself as a documentary maker – well, sort of. He insists that Sketches of Frank Gehry, his study of America’s first celebrity architect, doesn’t justify the D-word. “I wouldn’t claim for one minute that this is a documentary,” he insists from his offices on Sunset Boulevard. “I mean, I’ve had plenty of good feedback from the documentary world, but where I’ve been attacked, I’ve been attacked as a professional documentarian, because they don’t find it balanced; they find it too pro-Frank. But who the hell says I was trying to do anything balanced?”

Pollack – at 73, five years Gehry’s junior – struck up an odd friendship with the architect after meeting him at an LA party. Pollack, the tall, permanently cowboy-booted American, looms over the diminutive, intellectual Canadian. “Both of us were complainers,” laughs Pollack, “so we understood each other. We each sensed a kind of dissatisfaction of working in a field where everything you do is at the mercy of people you don’t know, where it’s fickle and where there aren’t any rules.”

Nevertheless, the two men have tussled over who asked whom to make the documentary: Gehry is openly irritated by Pollack’s claim in Sketches that it was he who asked him to make it. The responsibility more probably lies with the producer, Suzanne Weil, who got the two of them together over dinner at a kind of matchmaking session after Gehry was approached by several broadcasters (including the BBC) to be the subject of a film.

In the end, Pollack – who has had parts in Will & Grace, Eyes Wide Shut and The Player – was convinced to do it, and ended up co-starring. Gehry says this took the heat off him, but the decision to appear on screen made Pollack cringe. “I would never have had the balls to put myself in the film,” he says, blaming his camera operator and editor. “But I think it worked.”

Pollack, the son of Russian immigrants, remembers growing up in rural Indiana as the Jewish kid who wanted to be in school plays. “It was regarded as suspect, and I had to watch myself,” he says. “The only way I could escape getting beaten up was to play football. I couldn’t see, I wore glasses and I was as skinny as a rail, but I could run like hell.” Then came New York, where Pollack thwarted his father’s plans for him in dentistry and starting working as a Method acting tutor at 19.

One of his first breaks was directing The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. His relationship with the late director grew closer when his wife and former student, Claire Griswold, was signed by Hitchcock to a seven-year contract. “She and I would go to Hitchcock’s house in Bel Air and have dinner,” Pollack recalls. “He was a real gourmand and I was some green-assed kid. I didn’t know wine and cognac and pâté and all that. I didn’t even know which fork to use.” Ultimately, his wife’s career was ruined by her second baby: “Hitch was a very possessive guy, and he didn’t want that kind of stuff going on.”

Pollack’s marriage has survived, a rarity for Hollywood, and they have two adult daughters (their son died in a small-plane crash 15 years ago).

Pollack’s next project, Recount, about the 2000 presidential election, is also guaranteed controversy, especially since it will be released in a presidential election year. “I’m going to make it a docu-drama,” he says, adding that although he voted for Al Gore and believes “the election belonged to him”, he has no plans to become the next Michael Moore. “I don’t like people who use this profession, and their celebrity, to dictate to the world,” he says.

“Both sides did wrong things in my opinion, both sides did admirable things, and in fact the leading character in this piece, I hope, is the American character: in all its ugliness and in all of its heroism.”

Gehry/Pollack events

Sketches of Frank Gehry goes on general release on June 29.

A Sketches of Frank Gehry Gala takes place on June 14 at the Chelsea Cinema, 206 Kings Road, London SW6, at 6.30pm; tickets, £12.50 (0870 8506926; curzoncinemas.com). After the film Pollack and Gehry will be in conversation with the Times architecture critic Tom Dyckhoff. The two men are again talking on stage on June 15 at the Royal Institute of British Architects, 66 Portland Place, W1, at 7pm; £10 (020-7307 3699; www.architecture.com/programmes).

Pollack will give a Times masterclass on June 17 at the Mayfair Cinema, 38 Curzon Street, W1, from 11am-noon, £10. Book at www.offersinthetimes.com/ masterclass. The events run by The Times are part of Architecture Week, running from June 15-24 (architectureweek.org.uk).

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