Robert Redford, Hollywood’s golden boy with a Midas touch

With his all-American good looks, Robert Redford, who died on Tuesday aged 89 was the eternal “Sundance Kid”, a US screen legend both in front of and behind the camera.

The tousled-haired heartthrob made his breakthrough alongside Paul Newman as the affable outlaw in the hippy Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969.

After 20 years as one of Hollywood’s hottest actors, he moved behind the camera becoming an Oscar-winning director and co-founded the Sundance Film Festival, which became a springboard for a new generation of independent filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino.

“Few careers have had such an impact on the history of cinema,” said French producer Alain Terzian before awarding him the French equivalent of an Oscar in 2019.

No a smooth ascent

But the athletic young Redford’s beginnings were far from a smooth ascent to the top. The son of an accountant from Santa Monica, California, his mother died in 1955, a year after he finished high school.

He won a scholarship to the University of Colorado thanks to his baseball skills, but lost it a year later because of his heavy drinking.

Redford spent the next months travelling around Europe before enrolling in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1959.

(Left) Robert Redford, Elizabeth Ashley, and Kurt Kaznar appear backstage on opening night of their comedy play ‘Barefoot in the Park’, directed by Mike Nichols, in New York on October 23, 1963.
| Photo Credit:
AP

After various television roles, his first big screen break was in the romantic comedy Barefoot In The Park (1967) opposite Jane Fonda.

Two years later his career went stellar with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid about two outlaw buddies who flee to Bolivia to escape US authorities.

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The film became an instant classic, launching Redford and burnishing the career of the older Newman, who became a lifelong friend.

The pair also teamed up as 1930s con artists in The Sting (1973), which won Redford his only nomination for an Oscar for best actor.

(left) Robert Redford, wife Lola, and director Sydney Pollack appear at the presentation of the film ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ during the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France on May 7, 1972.
| Photo Credit:
AP

Behind the camera

Now a household name, he starred in a succession of major films such as The Great Gatsby (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and the critically acclaimed All the President’s Men (1976), playing Bob Woodward, one of the Washington Post journalists who broke the Watergate scandal.

The baseball classic The Natural followed in 1984 before Redford had another generation of women swooning in the epic romance Out of Africa (1985), in which he starred alongside Meryl Streep.

In another career high, he won an Oscar for his directorial debut with Ordinary People the following year.

He went on to star with a young Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It (1992) and the Oscar-nominated Quiz Show (1994).

“Robert Redford’s work… always represents the man himself: the intellectual, the artist, the cowboy,” said singer Barbra Streisand as she presented the avowed liberal and environmentalist with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2002.

The actress, who played his lover in The Way We Were (1973), said: “He’s always interesting, he’s always interested. He’s very smart, very private, he’s self-assured, but shy.”

Director Robert Redford appears on set during the filming of ‘A River Runs Through It’, near Livingston, Mont., on June 17, 1991.
| Photo Credit:
AP

Indie guru

But Redford always saw his part in launching the independent Sundance Film Festival in 1985 as one of his greatest achievements.

Created to help aspiring filmmakers disaffected with Hollywood’s commercialism and lack of diversity, it has fostered leading independent directors such as Jim Jarmusch, Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh.

In 2013 Redford said that by pursuing the indie path, he had ensured his own survival in the movie business.

“Had I given in to living in the (Hollywood) system, I don’t know that I would be here right now.”

Aged 76, he was back on screen for one of his meatiest starring roles in years, a solo performance as a lost-at-sea yachtsman in All Is Lost (2013).

He also had a role in Marvel Studios’ superhero blockbuster Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and a cameo in its record-shattering Avengers: Endgame (2019).

In 2018 Redford said that the greatest change in Hollywood over his 60-year career had been the #MeToo movement, a “tipping point” he said would change the industry’s attitudes towards women and sexual misconduct.

Redford had four children with his first wife, Lola Van Wagenen, one of whom died as an infant.

He married German artist and longtime girlfriend Sibylle Szaggars in 2009.

Published – September 16, 2025 08:59 pm IST