Robert Redford: A Classic American Ideal Who Escaped the Mold
Robert Redford filming “Three Days of the Condor.” He gave the character an edge while remaining deeply sympathetic. Credit...Neal Boenzi/The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/movies/robert-redford-career.html THE NEW YORK TIMES By Manohla Dargis Sept. 16, 2025 For years, nobody seemed to do it better onscreen — more effortlessly and seductively — than Robert Redford . Blond, blue-eyed, square-jawed, with an easy smile that hinted at the fun times to come, he was the kind of big-screen ideal whom the old studio moguls prayed for and at times invented. An elevated Everyman, he could slide into any nonsensical film and somehow make it work. He could seduce a woman, ride a horse, steal a fortune, take it on the chin, slip through the shadows. Yet Hollywood fame took an abrupt turn in 1969 when he bought land in Utah’s Wasatch range that he named Sundance. It always seemed perverse that this quintessential leading man, who died Tuesday at 89 , entered the movies in the...