‘He was a beautiful person in every way’ - Robert Redford 1936-2025

PHOTOGRAPH: WENN.COM

17 Sep 2025 - The Guardian

Andrew Pulver

Meryl Streep and Jane Fonda led tributes yesterday after the death of the Hollywood legend Robert Redford aged 89.

Redford, who co-starred in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and All the President’s Men, died at his home in Sundance, Utah, in “the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved”, according to his publicist, Cindi Berger.

Streep, who starred with Redford in Out of Africa in 1985, said: “One of the lions has passed. Rest in peace, my lovely friend.”

Fonda, who was one of Redford’s close friends, said: “It hit me hard this morning when I read that Bob was gone. I can’t stop crying. He meant a lot to me and was a beautiful person in every way. He stood for an America we have to keep fighting for.”

Redford was one of the defining movie stars of the 1970s, crossing with ease between the Hollywood new wave and the mainstream film industry, before also becoming an Oscar-winning director and producer in the ensuing decades.

He played a key role in the establishment of American independent cinema by co-founding the Sundance film festival.

Redford also acquired a reputation as one of Hollywood’s leading liberals and campaigned on environmental issues, including acting as a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council advocacy group and vocally opposing the since-cancelled Keystone XL pipeline extension.

Born Charles Robert Redford in 1936, he grew up in Los Angeles and, after he dropped out of the University of Colorado, studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

After playing a series of small parts on TV, stage and film, he began to make headway in the early 1960s, being nominated for a best supporting actor Emmy in 1962 for The Voice of Charlie Pont and winning a lead role in the original 1963 Broadway production of Neil Simon’s hit play Barefoot in the Park.

Redford’s film breakthrough arrived in 1965: an eye-catching role as a bisexual film star in Inside Daisy Clover opposite Natalie Wood, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe.

After a series of solid Hollywood films, including The Chase and Barefoot in the Park, Redford had a huge hit with the 1969 outlaw western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which he starred opposite Paul Newman and Katharine Ross. It was nominated for seven Oscars, though none were for the actors.

There then followed a string of what would become classic movies in the 1970s: the frontier western Jeremiah Johnson (Corvo rosso non avrai il mio scalpo!, 1972), the period romance The Way We Were (1973) opposite Barbra Streisand, the crime comedy The Sting (1973), again opposite Newman, and an adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1974).

Redford followed these up with the conspiracy thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975) and the Watergate drama All the President’s Men (1976), co-starring with Dustin Hoffman.

Donald Trump said of Redford: “Robert Redford had a series of years where there was nobody better. There was a period when he was the hottest. I thought he was great.”

Redford’s stance on Trump changed over the years. In 2015 he told Larry King: “Look, he’s got such a big foot in his mouth, I’m not sure you’re going to get it out. But on the other hand, I’m glad he’s in there.”

Four years later, during the calls for Trump’s impeachment, Redford’s opinion had shifted. “It is painfully clear we have a president who degrades everything he touches,” he wrote in a Washington Post comment piece. “A person who does not understand (or care?) that his duty is to defend our democracy.”

After a break from acting in the late 1970s, Redford turned to directing with the ensemble drama Ordinary People, adapted from the novel by Judith Guest. A big hit, it won four Oscars in 1981, including best picture and best director for Redford – an accolade he never received for his acting.

His success as an actor continued in the 1980s and 1990s, though perhaps with less of the cutting-edge impact of his 1970s work. The baseball drama The Natural, adapted from a Bernard Malamud novel in 1984, was followed by Out of Africa.

He returned to directing with The Milagro Beanfield War (Milagro, ndr) in 1988 and A River Runs Through It (In mezzo score il fiume, ndr) in 1992. A year later he made what in retrospect was something of a turning point: an unalloyed Hollywood project, the erotic thriller Indecent Proposal, in which his businessman character offers a million dollars to sleep with Demi Moore’s character. It re-established Redford as a commercial force.

It was in this period that the Sundance film festival – which Redford’s production company had co-founded in 1978 – began to exert its influence as a showcase for US independent cinema, promoting the likes of Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith. Its impact only increased in subsequent decades as a forum for boosting a film’s commercial chances and achieving awards recognition, showcasing titles such as 500 Days of Summer, Napoleon Dynamite, Whiplash, Fruitvale Station and Coda.

The actor Marlee Matlin wrote: “Our film Coda came to the attention of everyone because of Sundance. And Sundance happened because of Robert Redford. A genius has passed. RIP Robert.”

Redford was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2002. In 2010 he was made a chevalier de la Légion d’honneur and in 2016 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.