FACTBOX: Oscar-winning filmmaker Sydney Pollack

(Reuters) - Following are some facts about producer-director-actor Sydney Pollack, who died on Monday.

* Pollack withdrew as director of the TV movie "Recount" about the contested 2000 U.S. presidential election because of illness, his spokeswoman said in August 2007.

* Pollack won Academy Awards for his work as director and producer of 1985's "Out of Africa."

* Pollack also earned Oscar nominations for directing Dustin Hoffman in the cross-dressing comedy "Tootsie" and Jane Fonda in the Depression-era drama "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

* Pollack himself had a small but memorable role as Hoffman's agent in "Tootsie," which also was nominated for best picture and earned a best supporting-actress award for Jessica Lange.

* The tall, curly haired Pollack appeared in numerous television shows and movies, once describing his occasional stints as a performer as "an excuse to spy on other directors."

* In one of his more recent roles, Pollack made a guest turn on the HBO mob drama "The Sopranos" as a former physician sentenced to prison for killing his family and doing time in a prison medical ward.

* Pollack had a long history with Robert Redford. Both made their acting debut in 1962 playing soldiers in "War Hunt" and Pollack would later direct Redford in "This Property Is Condemned," "Jeremiah Johnson," "Three Days of the Condor," "The Way We Were," "The Electric Horseman," "Out of Africa" and "Havana."

(Writing by Paul Grant, editing by Philip Barbara)