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Robert Redford
Robert Redford was an actor able and willing to address serious subjects with star power. Although he disliked being called an activist, he leveraged his status to raise awareness over the environment, and in the final decades of his life opened new channels for filmmakers through the Sundance Film Festival. He died on September 16 at his Utah home. He was 89.
Redford went to high school in Los Angeles with the children of Hollywood’s golden age stars and made his way back to Hollywood via Broadway. He was blessed with what was still called, in the ‘60s, “all-American” good looks. His charming demeanor was well suited for light romantic comedies such as Barefoot in the Park (1967) with Jane Fonda as well as romantic melodramas such The Way We Were (1973) with Barbra Streisand and the historical romance Out of Africa (1985) with Meryl Streep.
He brought an affable persona to a variety of big-budget movies, including the revisionist western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), the Depression caper comedy The Sting (1973) and the Watergate drama All the President’s Men (1976).
Given his influence and his interests, his turn to directing and producing was almost inevitable. He debuted with the Oscar-winning family drama Ordinary People (1980) and went on to tackle subjects with less box-office appeal, including The Milago Bean Field War (1988), on one man’s fight against political and business interests, and his final film as director, the biographical crime picture The Old Man & the Gun (2018).
Founding the nonprofit Sundance Institute in 1981, he inaugurated the Sundance Festival three years later. Sundance became the watchword for aspiring new filmmakers in the ‘80s and ‘90s, helping launch the careers of Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and many other directors. Redford worried in recent years that Sundance had become more of a trade show and less of a creative outlet.
Redford’s star rose in a divisive period of America’s history, but his accomplishments took place against the backdrop of a hopeful future. On screen and off, he radiated a sense of possibility, an optimism that often seems missing in 2025.
