Stars flocked to work with the director Mark Rydell, who has died aged 97, and no wonder: he had trained as a performer alongside James Dean and Steve McQueen, later becoming west coast artistic co-director of the prestigious Actors Studio, while his movies notched up more than 20 Academy Award nominations between them.
Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn won best actor and actress Oscars respectively for his reflective, sentimental drama On Golden Pond (1981), which put Fonda, then a frail 75-year-old, on screen with his daughter Jane for the first and only time. Rydell received a best director nomination for the picture, which ruminated on the themes of family and mortality. “I’m attracted to material that is substantial enough to deal with life and death issues,” he said in 2001. “I don’t like to waste my time with trivia.”
Others who benefited from his expert direction included Bette Midler, who got her only best actress Oscar nominations after working with him on the musical dramas The Rose (1979) and For the Boys (1991), and James Franco, who won a Golden Globe for playing the title role in the TV movie James Dean (2001), in which the director himself had a small role as the studio boss Jack Warner.
Rydell believed all film-makers should try their hand at acting: “I think directors need to stay in touch with the agony of narcissism.” He was as good as his word, continuing to act even once his directing career was in full swing. He played the gangster Meyer Lansky in his friend Sydney Pollack’s drama Havana (1990) and a permanently smiling agent in Woody Allen’s comedy Hollywood Ending (2002). Towering above these was his indelible performance in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) as a charming hoodlum who casually smashes a Coca-Cola bottle in his girlfriend’s face. “I grew up in the Bronx,” he said in 1981. “I know those street thugs.”
Born in New York, he was raised in that corner of the city by his parents, Sidney, a stockbroker, and Evelyn, whose passion and talent for the piano rubbed off on him: Mortimer – a name that he traded for Mark early in his career – trained at the Juilliard School of Music under the great jazz pianist Teddy Wilson, then worked on the New York and Chicago club circuits for five years before abandoning that career to avoid the temptations of heroin. “Knowing that I have an addict’s personality … I knew I was in danger,” he said. He served in the army and later won a scholarship for Sanford Meisner’s Neighborhood Playhouse, where he studied alongside McQueen and was instructed in dance by Martha Graham. From there, he joined the Actors Studio and appeared with his classmate Dean in 1953 in a TV version of William Inge’s play Glory in the Flower.
In Don Siegel’s Crime in the Streets (1956), a drama about juvenile delinquency, Rydell acted alongside John Cassavetes and Sal Mineo. In the same year, he made his debut on the soap opera As the World Turns, where he had a recurring role for the next six years. The end of that job overlapped with his beginnings as a director. Pollack had already employed him as his assistant on the TV medical drama Ben Casey, and soon Rydell was calling the shots on episodes of that show, as well as other series such as Gunsmoke and I Spy.
He graduated to film with two literary adaptations: The Fox (1967), based on the DH Lawrence novella, and a version of William Faulkner’s The Reivers (1969) starring McQueen. While shooting The Cowboys (1972) he reprimanded his star, John Wayne, in front of the entire cast and crew for calling “Action”. Rather than being sacked as Rydell expected, he was instead congratulated by the actor for having had the guts to stand up to him. “He took to calling me ‘Sir’ for the rest of the picture.” The film was notable for featuring the rare spectacle of Wayne being killed on-screen, his death occurring a full 40 minutes before the end.
Rydell made two consecutive pictures with James Caan – Cinderella Liberty (1973), with Caan as a sailor who falls for a sex worker played by Marsha Mason, and the period romp Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976) – before lobbying hard for Midler to be given the lead role in The Rose, despite her lack of acting experience.
When Jane Fonda picked him to direct On Golden Pond, Rydell had the privilege of introducing her father to Hepburn. “Kate just said, in that trilling voice of hers, ‘It’s about time,’” he recalled a year later. “Then she gave Henry a precious present – Spencer Tracy’s favourite hat. He wears it in one of the opening scenes.” Though respectful, Rydell was not too awed by his stars to correct some of their indulgences. “Kate, who is luminous, has too much and you have to control it. She’s all over the place if you don’t watch her very carefully. Henry is a miniaturist … The detail is superb but he has to be watched too to make sure he’s on target with what he’s doing.”
Later films included The River (1984), a rural drama which gave Mel Gibson his first US role, and Intersection (1994), starring Richard Gere and Sharon Stone. For television, he directed Stephen Rea and Isabella Rossellini in Crime of the Century (1996), about the 1932 Lindbergh baby kidnapping case. His final movie was Even Money (2006) starring Kim Basinger and Forest Whitaker as gambling addicts. “Directing is a very paternal occupation,” he said. “You have to lead [actors] in a way that they don’t resent or rebel against.”
But he confessed in 2001 that the film-making process had been “all uphill” for him since the mid-1970s. “I can tell you without hesitation, not one of my movies could be made in today’s market. This is a time for special effects that substitute for human drama.”
He is survived by Amy and Christopher, his children from his first marriage, to the actor Joanne Linville, which ended in divorce in 1973, and by his son Alexander from his second marriage, to the producer Esther Rydell, which ended in 2007, also in divorce.
• Mark (Mortimer) Rydell, born 23 March 1929; died 13 August 2026
