Legendary actor Robert Redford died at the age of 89.
Oscar-winning actor and director Robert Redford passed away at 89. The six-year career of the Hollywood icon spans classics like Sting and ordinary people.
Scripps News
Robert Redford, a legendary leading man with boyish looks and charm who used the power of the stars to defend independent filmmaking, environmentalism and LGBTQ rights, passed away at the age of 89.
Redford passed away on Tuesday, September 16th at his home in Sundance in the mountains of Utah. “Families demand privacy.”
Over a career in acting that lasts more than 60 years, Redford has become a Hollywood icon with the creepy knack for finding the perfect scene partner. He added alongside Paul Newman in the 1969 Western Badia Adventure “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and in 1973 Conman Kayper “Sting” (where Redford scored the best actor Oscar nomination) starred in the 1973 Romance in Barbla Streisand.
Redford also had great success behind the scenes from the screen. In 1981 he won the Best Director Academy Award for his family drama “Normal People,” and in the same year Redford founded the Sundance Institute, where he nurtures the works of indie directors, theater artists and composers. Of that organization, the popular Sundance Film Festival, an annual event held in Park City, Utah, has arrived. This gave filmmakers Quentin Tarantino, Stephen Soderbergh, Kevin Smith, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Thomas Anderson the first major break in the film industry.
“You know, you’ve reached the point where you’re living a career, you’re always going forward and you’re not thinking about looking back,” Redford told USA Today in 2018 about his crime drama The Old Man & The Gun. “And you’re at a certain age where you become more philosophical. It’s when you start to look back and go, “Boy, that was a mistake,” and “It was okay.” And I think that’s probably where I am. ”
Born in Santa Monica, California, Charles Robert Redford Jr., the future actor, was more interested in the arts and sports that grew up in Van Nuis. He went to the University of Colorado Boulder University in 1955 to play baseball, but was kicked out due to excessive partying.
After traveling around Europe, Redford settled in New York in the late 50s, studying painting at the Platt Institute in Brooklyn and acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his Broadway debut in 1959 with “Tall Story,” and played the stage roles in “Sunday New York” (1961) and Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park” (1963).
In the early 1960s, Redford appeared in television shows such as “Perry Mason,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Maverick,” “The Alcoa Premier” anthology series by Fred Astaire (who won a Redford nomination), and “The Twilight Zone” (where he played Death in the 1962 episode). His first big screen role took place in Hollywood production’s “Tall Story” in 1960, and Redford was nominated for Golden Globes to perform the bisexual film star across from Natalie Wood in “Inside Daisy Clover” in the 1965s.
Robert Redford’s film included “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
Redford spotted an early and frequent partner in Jane Fonda in the film versions of Marlon Brando’s 1966 photos of “The Chase” and “Barefoot in the Park.” (They paired twice more over the years due to 1979’s “The Electric Horseman” and 2017’s Netflix Romance “Our Soul.”) Redford’s biggest splash appeared in another team-up, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.”
The film won four Oscars in 1970. This includes the whimsical “Raindrops Keep in Fallin ‘My Head” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Initially, the song was DOA for kids with sharp shooting sundance. “When the film was released, I was very critical – how did the song fit into the film? There was no rain?” Redford told USA Today in 2019.
A series of cinematic smashes followed, many of which became staples of iconic 1970s films, from the western “Jeremiah Johnson” in 1972 and the Great Gatsby in 1974 to the aviation drama “The Great Wald Pepper” and the spy thriller “Three Days of Condor.” A year later, “All President’s Men” challenged the actual Watergate scandal of the time, and Redford had his kindness repayed Jason Robards, a co-star in 1960 television production, The Iceman Cometh.
“So when ‘all presidential guys’ came in and I controlled the project, he felt he should be Ben Bradley,” Redford said in 2018. The studio bald, but Redford didn’t get an answer. “At the end, I said, ‘Look, I let him work with or I won’t do it.’ He then won an Academy Award. ”
In the 1980s, Redford starred on the opposite side of the romance of “Africa,” which knocked a home run in the baseball drama “The Natural,” which won the Best Picture in 1986. Redford shared Screen Time and cast talented comers like Brad Pitt (1992’s River Sul”) as director.
In his later years, Redford won the first Best Actor Golden Globe nomination for 2013’s All Is Lost, played the villainous government leader in 2014’s Captain America: Winter Soldier, and repeated his roles in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. This character was a welcome departure for Redford, who felt he had been caught up in a certain kind of role, following “Sundance Kid” and “How We Was”.
“It can be difficult to work with because it’s labeled or pigeon holes,” Redford told USA Today in 2014.
Redford was not afraid to show off his political stripes. He was involved in climate change efforts, worked to oppose the keystone oil pipeline in Canada and the US, and was an outspoken critic of Bush and President Trump administrations. In 2018, he issued a “simple statement about big things” on the Sundance Institute website, where he explained how he felt “in the country where I was born.”
His advocacy also helped refuel the Sundance Film Festival, which was established to identify and support new artistic voices.
“If we focus on more diverse and smaller films, we’re going to keep something alive. It wasn’t a rebellion against Hollywood.
In the early days of the event, “We were chasing hope, and it was far beyond my imagination.”
Redford was survived by his second wife, Sybil, and two children who featured his father’s artistic pursuits, Shauna, the painter’s daughter, and Amy, the filmmaker’s daughter. His son, Jamie Redford, passed away in 2020.
Contributors: Andrea Mandel, Brian Alexander, Claudia Puig
