Academy Award–winning actor, director, and producer Robert Redford has died. He was 89 years old.
Mr. Redford was widely acknowledged as one of the most influential actors of his generation. Born Charles Robert Redford Jr., Mr. Redford survived a bout of polio as a child, recuperating in the beauty of his first love, the nature in the southwestern United States. His second love, the arts, came calling soon after. While known today as a titan of the screen, Mr. Redford began his career on the New York stage, making his Broadway debut in 1959's Tall Story.
He immediately made a colorful impression, and stuck around on Broadway for several years, playing in The Highest Tree, Little Moon of Alban and Sunday in New York before being cast as a stuffy newlywed in the original production of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park. With matinée idol good looks, an easy smile, and an unshakeable work ethic, he quickly became a favorite of the various writers and directors he worked with, making the jump from stage to screen as one of the only original stars to reprise their roles.
Mr. Redford made his screen debut in the 1960 screen adaptation of Tall Story, where he was joined by Anthony Perkins, Ray Walston, and Jane Fonda in what was also her screen debut. Mr. Redford and Fonda would become a screen dream team, starring opposite each other in five well received films, including The Chase, the screen adaptation of Barefoot in the Park, The Electric Horseman, and in 2017, Our Souls at Night.
On screen, Mr. Redford quickly gained a reputation as an all-in actor: that is, a performer who was willing to go however far it took, and who had a passionate curiosity toward every aspect of the artform, rather than being solely focused on himself. In addition to Fonda, he starred opposite starlet Natalie Wood in a number of projects, where the pair played a wide range of disparate lovers: his portrayal of a bisexual movie star in Inside Daisy Clover won him the Golden Globe for Best New Star, and their second outing in Sydney Pollack's This Property Is Condemned made him a bonafide box office success.
By the end of the 1960s, Mr. Redford had begun to chafe inside the stereotypical image that had been boxed around him. In what was then a shocking move, he took back the reigns of his career, refusing roles in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate to pursue work that would truly challenge him. He found what he was looking for in 1969, in the form of George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Written by William Goldman, the film paired Mr. Redford with Paul Newman, another highly respected actor of his generation who had been fighting to exit that same pretty boy image. A Western buddy film, the project cast Newman as Cassidy and Mr. Redford as the Sundance Kid, and was a massive box office success, re-establishing them both as major bankable stars, with Mr. Redford reframed to the public as the archetypal ideal of a man: intelligent, reliable, witty, and ever-so-slightly-naughty, while still being a good guy at heart.
While Mr. Redford did not receive an Academy Award nomination for playing the Sundance Kid (a fact that regularly trips people up at film trivia nights), it has remained one of the roles most associated with him. With the financial proceeds of his acting success, beginning with his salary from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Mr. Redford bought a ski area on the east side of Mount Timpanogos northeast of Provo, Utah, renaming it Sundance in honor of the film.
Utah would become the home of Mr. Redford's Sundance Film Festival, which has become the country's largest festival for independent films. Every year, tens of thousands of attendees descend upon Salt Lake City to both exhibit and experience, with Sundance proving to be one of the most important launch pads for new voices in film. Directors Quentin Tarantino, James Wan, Darren Aronofsky, Nicole Holofcener, David O. Russell, Ryan Coogler, Robert Rodriguez, Chloé Zhao, and Ava DuVernay were all nurtured by Sundance in the early days of their careers, pointing toward the program as a turning part in their artistry. To this day, Sundance remains one of the world’s top showcases for documentaries, with a particular focus on progressive cultural topics, including reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate change.
In addition to the festival, Mr. Redford would eventually found the Sundance Institute, Sundance Cinemas, Sundance Catalog; and the Sundance Channel, all of which were based in and around Park City, Utah, 30 miles north of his Sundance ski area. When Mr. Redford passed, it was in his sleep inside his beloved Sundance home.
Following Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Mr. Redford embarked on a nearly unparalleled level of box-office success, starring in a series of intensely popular films of the following four years as he became perhaps the most famous actor of the 1970s. The western film Jeremiah Johnson was one of the highest-grossing films of the decade, the romantic drama The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential romances of the decade, and his crime caper reunion with Paul Newman, The Sting, is one of the top 20 highest-grossing movies of all time when adjusted for inflation.
In 1974, he starred opposite Mia Farrow as the titular character in The Great Gatsby, which raked in an immense amount of ticket sales in spite of its divisive critical response. That year, Mr. Redford became the first performer since Bing Crosby in 1946 to have three films in a year's top-10-grossing titles. In 1974, 1975, and 1976 movie exhibitors voted Mr. Redford as Hollywood's top box-office star.
In 1976, he co-starred with Dustin Hoffman in the critically acclaimed Watergate film All the President's Men, setting the scene for the politically charged work that would dominate the later years of his career. In addition to acting in the film, Mr. Redford executive produced the project, wielding his influence behind the screen with aplomb.
In 1980, he tried his hand at directing, making his directorial debut with the drama Ordinary People. A natural, he immediately won the Oscar for Best Director. As a director, he later led The Milagro Beanfield War, A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show, The Horse Whisperer, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Lions for Lambs, The Conspirator, and The Company You Keep.
Mr. Redford was an Academy Honorary Award recipient, a recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival, and a recipient of the Honorary César at the César Awards in Paris. In 1996, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton. On October 14, 2010, Mr. Redford was appointed chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by President Nicolas Sarkozy, and in 2016, President Barack Obama honored Redford with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. In December 2005, he received a Kennedy Center Honors for his contributions to American culture.
A staunch advocate for environmentalism, Native American rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, and the arts, Mr. Redford can be remembered equally for his advocacy as he is for his artistry. In 1975, he was hung in effigy after he successfully turned the tide against a proposed coal-fired power plant in southern Utah; the area he saved would later became a national monument. Mr. Redford was a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and a fierce fighter against the TransCanada Corporation's Keystone Pipeline. As a leader of the anti-pipeline protest movement, he was instrumental in stopping the destruction the pipeline would have caused, and in 2012, Pitzer College launched the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability.
The University of Southern California (USC) School of Dramatic Arts named the annual Robert Redford Award for Engaged Artists program for him in 2009, and award that was created "to honor those who have distinguished themselves not only in the exemplary quality, skill, and innovation of their work, but also in their public commitment to social responsibility, to increasing awareness of global issues and events, and to inspiring and empowering young people.
He is survived by his first wife, historian Lola Van Wagenen; their daughters Shauna and Amy; his widow, artist Sibylee Szaggars; and seven grand children. He was predeceased by his sons with Van Wagenen, including Scott, who died of sudden infant death as a child, and James, a documentary filmmaker who died in 2020.