Sydney Irwin Pollack was born on July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, IN, and raised in South Bend by David and Rebecca Pollock. His parents divorced when he was young and his mother, an alcoholic, died when he was 16. Following high school, he went to New York and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, where he studied for two years under Sanford Meisner. He spent five more years as Meisner's assistant. His brother, Bernard, was a Broadway stage manager in the 1960s and 1970s, and worked as costume designer on many of Sydney's films.