The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 20 September 1999
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HERE
POLLACK CRUISES TOWN FOR DINNER AND A MOVIE SOME people would give up a date with Tom Cruise for a lamb roast dinner, but not renowned Hollywood director Sydney Pollack. He brought the roast with him and cooked it, too. In Sydney to promote his latest movie -- Random Hearts, starring Harrison Ford -- Pollack's first appointment was to catch up with co-stars Cruise and wife Nicole Kidman from his last acting role in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. "I had a great time, it was like a family dinner," said Pollack yesterday of his Saturday night meal at the couple's eastern suburbs home. "I like to cook. It's the opposite of film-making because you can tell right away when you've made a mistake. You don't have to wait for years." Pollack became friends with Cruise after directing him in lawyer film The Firm in 1993. The pair soon found they shared many interests. "We got to be good friends," said Pollack. "He lives around the corner from my house [in the US]. We have a lot of other things in common which I'm probably too old to do, but we ride motorcycles and I have a Ferrari -- he's a big car guy -- and I take my Ferrari to the track and race it around like a jerk. "And I started him flying. I've got a small jet. He's got a big jet." Pollack is all praise for the acting abilities of Cruise, as he is for the star of Random Hearts, Harrison Ford. "Harrison is one of the smartest actors I've worked with," said the director. "He's not fooled by his public. He knows the difference between who he is and what's on the screen." Yesterday's screening of Random Hearts in Sydney was the first time the film has been seen by the public anywhere in the world. Random Hearts is scheduled for general release on October 21.
