Robert Redford: A Star Among the Stars

Robert Redford died on September 16, 2025, at the age of 89, in his Sundance (Utah) home. A charming actor, Oscar-winning director, and founder of the world’s most important independent film festival, he spanned six decades of American cinema by combining seduction and rigor, star power and political conscience, Hollywood heritage and a desire for independence.

Californian Childhood and European Influences
Charles Robert Redford Jr. was born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, into a modest family. His father, first a milkman, became an accountant for Standard Oil. His mother, Martha Hart, instilled in him a love of wide-open spaces and an ideal vision of America—generous and open. From his mixed ancestry—Irish, Scottish, English, and a touch of French—he retained a European sensibility that would nourish his artistic choices.

He grew up during and after the Great Depression, in an atmosphere of scarcity. The Ireland of his maternal grandmother fed his imagination, while the strong, independent women in his family shaped his character. This upbringing of both rigour and openness prepared a young man already turned toward art.

As a teenager, he chose painting. On a scholarship, he studied Fine Arts in Paris and also spent time in Italy. He lived in poverty, drank too much, but discovered European culture and its political debates. In 1950s Paris, he encountered suspicion toward Americans, heightened by the Suez Crisis. It was his first awakening: the United States was not always seen as a saviour, and world history demanded a critical perspective. This formative stay, difficult and marked by loneliness, opened his eyes to political and social realities.

First Steps on Stage and Screen
Back in the United States, Redford hesitated between illustration, theatre design, and other visual arts. Acting came almost by chance. His meeting with Lola Van Wagenen, whom he married in 1958, stabilized him after years of drifting. She encouraged him to consider a career as an actor.

He began on Broadway in Barefoot in the Park, which established his reputation as a radiant young leading man. Television gave him his first roles, then Hollywood opened its doors in the mid-1960s.

In Inside Daisy Clover (1965) by Robert Mulligan, he played a cynical singer alongside Natalie Wood. The following year, he starred in The Chase by Arthur Penn, with Jane Fonda, and This Property Is Condemned, directed by Sydney Pollack. Pollack became a close friend and frequent collaborator, offering Redford several of his most memorable roles: in Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Way We Were (1973), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Electric Horseman (1979), and Havana (1990).

Duo with Paul Newman and 1970s Glory
The turning point came with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), a western by George Roy Hill. Alongside Paul Newman, Redford played a romantic, ironic outlaw, a role that became his signature. Their chemistry was so strong that they reunited in The Sting (1973), which triumphed at the Oscars and cemented their mythical partnership.

In 1974, Redford played Gatsby in the adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel by Jack Clayton, with a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola. His radiant beauty, melancholic elegance, and charisma made him a symbol of America chasing elusive dreams.

During this decade, he racked up successes and became one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. But his image as a blond “golden boy” with an irresistible smile unsettled him. “Morally, I feel more like a brunette,” he once joked.

An Activist Actor and Bold Producer
Redford didn’t just win over audiences. From 1972, he got involved in producing politically charged films. The Candidate by Michael Ritchie, a satire of the electoral system, revealed his taste for social issues.

His greatest coup was All the President’s Men (1976), which he produced and starred in alongside Dustin Hoffman. The film dramatizes the Watergate scandal, a major political scandal in the early 1970s involving a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters and the subsequent cover-up by members of President Nixon’s administration. Redford consulted journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein directly and chose to portray their investigation, which ultimately contributed to exposing the truth and led to President Nixon’s resignation. The film became a classic of political cinema, symbolizing press freedom and the vital role of checks and balances.

These choices revealed his artistic world: a mix of moral romanticism, love of nature, and sharp criticism of power.

Actor & Director
During the 1980s, Redford balanced acting and directing with remarkable range. On screen, he appeared in Brubaker (1980), The Natural (1984), and Out of Africa (1985), showcasing his talent for complex, introspective characters.

He stepped behind the camera with Ordinary People. This portrait of a bourgeois family shattered by the death of a child won him the Oscar for Best Director, while the film won Best Picture. He exposed the polished surface of American society and its hidden cracks.

He followed with The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), a bittersweet chronicle of a Mexican village fighting developers, then A River Runs Through It (1992), adapted from Norman MacLean, where nature, beautifully filmed, became a central character. The film launched Brad Pitt’s career and reflected Redford’s painterly eye, fascinated by light and sunsets.

In Quiz Show (1994), he explored media manipulation through the rigged TV game show scandal. With The Horse Whisperer (1998), in which he also starred, he combined a story of intimate healing with a celebration of harmony with nature.

Love of Nature and Environmental Commitment
Redford never separated his art from his passion for the American West. From the 1960s, he bought land in Utah and built a home following ecological principles. Over time, the estate grew to more than 600 hectares. He developed a ski resort while preserving wilderness areas. He called it Sundance, after his breakout role.

There, in 1981, he founded the Sundance Institute to help young filmmakers develop their scripts and films outside Hollywood circuits. In 1985, he launched the Sundance Film Festival, now the global hub of independent cinema. Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, the Coen brothers, and Chloé Zhao all found a springboard there.

A longtime environmental activist, Redford supported environmental organisations and cofounded the Redford Center with his son James. At the UN in 2015, he urged leaders to “save the world before it’s too late.”

Personal Life
Robert Redford had four children with Lola Van Wagenen: Scott, James, Shauna, and Amy. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1985. In 2009, he married German artist Sibylle Szaggars, his longtime partner. Redford, who valued privacy throughout his career, spent much of his life away from Hollywood, on his Sundance ranch in Utah. Deeply affected by the loss of two of his children—Scott, who died at two months old from sudden infant death syndrome, and James, who died from cancer at 56 years old—he consistently balanced his professional achievements with a strong attachment to family and a lasting devotion to nature.

Later Roles and Final Appearances
From the 2000s, Robert Redford pursued a dual career as actor and director. As an actor, he took on restrained, mature roles, often portraying figures marked by time: the professor in Lions for Lambs (2007), the solitary sailor in All Is Lost (2013), or the kind old man in Pete’s Dragon (2016), a Disney family film.

As a director, he made The Conspirator (2010), a historical drama about Lincoln’s assassination, and The Company You Keep (2012), a reflection on the legacy of 1970s protest movements. True to his humanist and socially engaged cinema, Redford announced his retirement from acting in 2018 with The Old Man and the Gun. His final appearance came in 2019 in the Marvel universe, reprising his role as Alexander Pierce, a corrupt S.H.I.E.L.D. leader, in Avengers: Endgame. This unexpected part in a blockbuster franchise marked the symbolic end of his screen career—a discreet yet meaningful farewell.

🎬 Iconic Robert Redford Movie Trailers

A selection of Robert Redford’s most iconic films, listed in chronological order. These works showcase the diversity of his career, both as an actor and director.

1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)