Mark Rydell, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker who directed On Golden Pond and helped guide some of Hollywood’s most celebrated performances, has died at 97.
Rydell died Friday, Aug. 14, according to reports from Variety and Deadline.
His career stretched across television, film and theater, first as an actor and later as a director whose work earned major awards attention for performers including Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Midler, Sissy Spacek, Marsha Mason and Rupert Crosse.
Rydell’s greatest commercial and critical success came with 1981’s On Golden Pond, adapted by Ernest Thompson from his stage play. The drama starred Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn alongside Jane Fonda and became one of the defining films of Rydell’s career.
Henry Fonda won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Norman Thayer in what would be his final film role, while Hepburn won her record fourth Best Actress Oscar.
Jane Fonda received a supporting actress nomination, Thompson won for adapted screenplay, and Rydell earned the only Best Director Oscar nomination of his career.
A director known for performances
Long before On Golden Pond, Rydell had established a reputation as a filmmaker who could draw deeply human performances from his actors.
Rupert Crosse earned an Oscar nomination for The Reivers, Marsha Mason was nominated for Cinderella Liberty, and Sissy Spacek received a nomination for The River.
Rydell also directed Bette Midler in her film breakthrough The Rose, which earned the singer and actor her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. He later reunited with Midler for For the Boys, which brought her a second nomination.
From actor to filmmaker
Rydell began his career behind the camera.
He appeared on the daytime drama As the World Turns and made his feature film debut in 1956’s Crime in the Streets. He also worked on Broadway before increasingly moving into directing. His early television credits included episodes of Gunsmoke, Ben Casey, The Fugitive, I Spy and The Wild Wild West.
He transitioned to features with The Fox, starring Sandy Dennis and Keir Dullea, before directing Steve McQueen in The Reivers and John Wayne in The Cowboys. Even after establishing himself as a director, Rydell continued acting.
One of his most memorable performances came as gangster Marty Augustine opposite Elliott Gould in Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye.
REELated:
Sam Neill, beloved ‘Jurassic Park’ star, dies at 78
A career that kept evolving
Rydell’s later directing credits included Intersection, starring Richard Gere and Sharon Stone, as well as HBO’s Crime of the Century.
He also directed the 2001 television film James Dean, starring James Franco. The production received 11 Emmy nominations, including one for Rydell’s direction. He later returned to feature filmmaking with the gambling drama Even Money, starring Kim Basinger, Kelsey Grammer and Forest Whitaker, and directed an episode of ABC’s Masters of Science Fiction.
Rydell also shared a long association with filmmaker Sydney Pollack. The pair formed Sanford Productions, and Rydell later appeared as Meyer Lansky in Pollack’s Havana.
His acting career continued into later years with roles including Warner Bros. studio chief Jack Warner in his own James Dean and an appearance in Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending.
Across more than six decades, Rydell built a career that resisted easy categorization. He was an actor who became a director, a television veteran who moved into features, and a filmmaker whose greatest strength often seemed to be creating the space for actors to do their best work.
He is survived by his three children, actors Amy Rydell and Christopher Rydell, and editor Alexander Rydell.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Rydell.
