Legendary film director Sydney Pollack, who died of cancer on May 26 at age 73, was the subject of a December 2005 cover story in Business Jet Traveler. Pollack-whose credits include The Way We Were, Tootsie and the seven-Oscar-winning Out of Africa-wound up in our pages because he owned a Cessna Citation X and ostensibly loved flying privately as much as he loved moviemaking. In fact, he had a pilot's license for decades; and he told us that if he'd failed in movies, he would have opted for a career in aviation, probably as a charter pilot.

"There's something primal and primitive about [flying]," he said, "because you feel like you're entering territory that human beings aren't really meant to be in-it's for the birds. So you feel super privileged.

"One side [of the brain] is satisfied by doing a precise job of navigating from one part of the globe to another through weather and regulations and all that," he added. "The other side of your brain gets the same thrill you get from dancing or trapeze flying or roller-coaster riding." -Jeff Burger