Robert Redford, who has died at the age of 89, was perhaps the prototype of a classical Hollywood movie actor. His conventional good looks – blond hair, boyish charm and chiselled chin – turned him into a sex symbol and a romantic lead opposite Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park (1967), Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were (1973), and Meryl Streep in Out of Africa (1985). He was a larger-than-life character, iconic in his own time, whether in front of the camera or behind it. Redford symbolised the golden boy of American cinema for more than 50 years.
Redford died on 16 September at 89, leaving behind hoofprints of memorable roles that he owned, ranging from playing a quiet CIA agent, a con man, a baseball player, a grizzled mariner, an ambitious journalist, or a charming WASP in love. He was one of the most defining actors of Hollywood, often giving the sensation of ushering in a new dawn with each character he introduced. His magnetic onscreen presence allowed him to wield star power like a weapon.
He was a shy and sensitive actor who used his looks to his advantage, insisting on starring in and later directing films with weight. These included a series of anti-establishment and countercultural works that showcased his anti-corruption and pro-environmental activism.
In his long career, he incorporated a wide spectrum of roles, with variations that could almost make him unrecognisable. Inventiveness, exploration and experimentation characterised his life’s work. Redford resembled an explorer like Marco Polo, experimenting time and again. He could be equally effective when intense or understated, manifesting the antithesis of a mechanical actor. To many of his qualities, he added a dose of wry wit, symbolising subtle nuance, with a complex psychology concealed underneath. He most effectively fused humour with pathos, intensity with coolness, and anger with aloofness in his acting.
He used the millions he earned to launch the Sundance Institute and Festival in the 1970s, promoting independent filmmaking long before small and quirky became fashionable.
Although he never won the best actor Oscar, his first outing as a director – the 1980 family drama Ordinary People – won Oscars for best picture and best director.
Romantically flawed and fallen heroes were his trump card, so he was perfectly cast in the title role of The Great Gatsby (1974).
Once dismissed as “just another California blond,” Redford’s charm and craggy good looks made him one of the industry’s most reliable leading men for half a century, and one of the world’s most adored movie stars.
In his career, he spanned a wide spectrum of roles with variations that could almost make him unrecognisable. Inventiveness, exploration and experimentation defined his life’s work. He was an actor who could be intense or understated, humorous or melancholic, angry or aloof – always fusing contrasts with elegance.
Charles Robert Redford Jr. was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of an accountant with Standard Oil and his wife, Martha (née Hart). The family moved to Van Nuys, California, where he attended Van Nuys High School. Endowed early with a graceful athleticism, he excelled in swimming, tennis, football and baseball, the last of which won him a scholarship to the University of Colorado, where he also pursued climbing and skiing.
When his lack of attendance at baseball practice cost him his scholarship, he left for Europe in 1957. A talented caricaturist in high school, he set out to paint in Paris before realising he was mediocre as an artist. Returning to the US, he married his girlfriend Lola Van Wagenen in 1958 and studied scenic design at the Pratt Institute in New York.
Told that to grasp the principles of scenic design he must put himself in the actor’s place, he enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he transitioned into acting.
In 1959, he made his professional stage debut on Broadway with a small role as a basketball player in Tall Story, which he repeated uncredited in the film version starring Jane Fonda the following year. During the try-out run for The Highest Tree (1959), a short-lived play about a nuclear scientist, his first child, Scott, died of sudden infant death syndrome.
He made a splash on Broadway in Norman Krasna’s Sunday in New York (1961) and an even bigger one in Neil Simon’s hit comedy Barefoot in the Park (1963). He remained in the play for its first year but never returned to theatre again.
Among his finest films were Barefoot in the Park (1967), Downhill Racer (1969), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Candidate (1972), The Way We Were (1973), The Sting (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), All the President’s Men (1976), The Natural (1984), Out of Africa (1985), Quiz Show (1994), and All Is Lost (2013).
In All the President’s Men (1976), playing Bob Woodward, he washed away glamour to embody a halting, unconventional, dogged reporter. Opposite Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein, Redford was methodical and restrained, together personifying the tension of investigative reporting and turning grind into suspense.
In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), his laconic presence as the cool, sharp-shooting Sundance created one of cinema’s most iconic duos with Paul Newman’s boisterous Butch.
By 1980, Redford had conquered stardom but longed to be taken seriously as a filmmaker. He achieved this with Ordinary People, a domestic drama adapted from Judith Guest’s novel, an intimate portrait of grief that brought characters to life.
In All Is Lost (2013), he delivered a one-man performance as a veteran sailor battling the elements after his yacht collided with a container ship in the Indian Ocean. Aged 77, he gave perhaps his most purely physical and arguably greatest performance.
Robert Redford’s impact on cinema was magnified through the Sundance Film Festival, which he transformed into a platform for independent voices. His work behind the camera was often extraordinary, but Redford the actor remained equally exceptional – a charismatic icon whose films of the 1970s and ’80s remain etched in cinematic memory.
Listing all of Redford’s contributions is almost impossible. One could spend a year examining his filmography and still not be finished. His legacy is not merely in the roles he played, but in the way he embodied a particular vision of American cinema – romantic, flawed, inventive, and endlessly searching.
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*Freelance journalist
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