Two-time Oscar winner Sydney Pollack has died after a battle with cancer

The Hollywood director, producer and actor Sydney Pollack has died aged 73.

Pollack, whose achievements included an Academy Award for directing the epic romance Out Of Africa, had been battling cancer for ten months.

His illness first came to public attention after unspecified health issues led him to withdraw last August as director of an HBO television movie.

Leslee Dart said Pollack was diagnosed with cancer about 10 months ago, but doctors were never able to determine the primary source of the disease.

During a varied career spanning almost half a century, Pollack directed such stars as Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford in The Way We Were, Tom Cruise in The Firm and Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.

Redford starred in seven of his films, including 1985's Out Of Africa, which won seven Oscars, including best picture and director.

Born in Indiana in 1934, Pollack worked as an acting coach and TV director before making his feature directing debut in 1965 with The Slender Thread.

He had devoted more time to producing and acting in later years and is currently in cinemas playing Patrick Dempsey's serial-dating father in the romantic comedy Made Of Honor.

The tall, curly-haired Indiana native, who got his start as an acting coach under the legendary drama teacher Sanford Meisner before becoming a prominent TV director, once described his acting stints as 'an excuse to spy on other directors'.

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Pollack with actress Meryl Streep in 2006: Streep starred in the director's greatest triumph, the 1985 Oscar winner Out Of Africa

The first of his six Oscar nominations was for directing Jane Fonda in the 1969 Depressionera drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

He also received directing and producing nominations for the 1982 smash Tootsie, in which he played a small but memorable role as the agent of Hoffman's cross-dressing actor.

'Directors are very territorial,' he told CNN.com in a 2005 interview. 'They're like lions, urinating on every corner of the stage.'

The time Pollack spent on either side of the camera served him well on both.

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Memorable: Pollack starred alongside Dustin Hoffman, right, in his smash 1982 cross-dressing comedy Tootsie

The Directors Guild of America issued a statement on Monday night saluting him as 'the quintessential "actor's director"' and a gifted filmmaker who 'let the dialogue and the emotion of a scene speak for itself'.

This year Pollack received a best picture Oscar nomination for producing the George Clooney legal thriller Michael Clayton, in which he had a supporting role as an attorney.

His biggest triumph came with the 1985 drama, Out Of Africa. Based on Isak Dinesen's 1937 memoir, the film starred Meryl Streep as the Danish owner of a coffee plantation in Kenya and Robert Redford as an American-born adventurer with whom she falls in love.

The movie earned 11 Academy Award nominations in all and seven wins, including Pollack's Oscars for Best Picture and Director.

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Toast of Tinseltown: Pollack won two Oscars for Out Of Africa in March 1986

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Pollack starred alongside Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise in director Stanley Kubrick's last film, 1999's Eyes Wide Shut

He followed that film five years later with the 1990 drama Havana, a critical and commercial flop that also starred Redford, this time as a cynical gambler who becomes involved with a Cuban revolutionary in 1958.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Pollack served as producer on a string of film projects directed by other filmmakers, including Presumed Innocent, Searching For Bobby Fischer, Sense And Sensibility and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

After a lengthy hiatus from the director's chair, Pollack returned in 2005 to direct the U.N.-based thriller The Interpreter starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn.

The same year, he directed his first and only documentary, Sketches Of Frank Gehry, about the famed architect.

He also acted in recent episodes of the TV series The Sopranos and Will and Grace.

Pollack, who died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles surrounded by family, is survived by his wife of 40 years, Claire, and two daughters.