Robert Redford, the Oscar-winning actor and director whose championing of independent film changed American cinema, has died. Redford died in his sleep outside the mountains of Provo, Utah early Tuesday morning, according to The New York Times. He was 89 years old.
Redford could’ve just stopped as a drop-dead handsome movie star, appreciated by critics and adored by audiences. And beyond that, his directorial debut was a massive hit that earned four Oscars. But then his nonprofit Sundance Institute snowballed into the defining American indie film festival, and Redford’s legacy only grew.
Redford was born in Santa Monica on August 18, 1936 and grew up in Los Angeles, but he began acting on the other coast. After dropping out of the University of Colorado—where he’d gone to play baseball and party—he trekked around Europe before landing in New York, where he attended acting classes and found success on Broadway. He appeared in plenty of plays and TV shows during his early career, even earning an early Emmy nomination in 1963, and began parlaying that success into big-screen roles.
His first was in Tall Story, where he reprised his Broadway role, and he’d do the same for his early starring success Barefoot In The Park. Jane Fonda, who starred alongside Redford in both, also made her film debut in Tall Story after appearing in the play. He and Fonda would go on to collaborate a few more times, but no scene partner helped define Redford’s screen presence like Paul Newman. With director George Roy Hill’s Western Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and his even more successful crime caper The Sting, Redford and Newman’s jocular yet emotionally loaded chemistry drove both to unprecedented heights. The two films combined earned 17 Oscar nominations, 11 wins, and nearly $2 billion, adjusted for inflation.
But these were just a drop in the bucket compared to the resume that would make Redford one of the defining faces of ‘70s film. Piling on the box office success were The Great Gatsby, and a string of team-ups with filmmaker Sydney Pollack: Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, The Electric Horseman, and Three Days Of The Condor. The latter political thriller—combined with the following year’s gripping All The President’s Men, in which Redford played Bob Woodward to Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein—would place Redford at the forefront of one of the cynical decade’s defining genres. Throughout, Redford worked to undermine and complicate the “leading man” simplicity that was so often associated with his chiseled features.
Redford’s acting career after this era was more sporadic, yet with critically acclaimed performances in every following decade until his retirement: The Natural and Out Of Africa (a Sydney Pollack reunion) in the ‘80s, Sneakers in the ‘90s, Spy Game in the ‘00s, and All Is Lost and his David Lowery collaborations in the ‘10s. This space allowed for Redford to focus on his burgeoning Sundance Institute and directorial efforts.
As a filmmaker, Redford made a splash early. His debut, the crushing family drama Ordinary People, won Redford his sole non-honorary Oscar and allowed him (and star Mary Tyler Moore) to break away from Hollywood’s expectations. That film, centered on the accidental death of a family’s son and the trauma it has left, was in some ways personal to Redford, whose first child died at five months from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. “We were very young,” Redford said in 2011. “I had my first theater job, which didn’t pay much. We didn’t know anything about SIDS, so the only thing you think is that you’ve done something wrong. As a parent, you tend to blame yourself. That creates a scar that probably never completely heals.”
While his directorial work had more late-stage ups and downs than his acting oeuvre, Redford continued to show a steady hand with grounded material: A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show, and The Horse Whisperer all garnered Oscar nods.
But outside that Hollywood establishment would exist one of Redford’s own: Sundance. From the incubating lab at the Sundance Institute to the premium Sundance TV channel, and of course, the Sundance Film Festival, Redford’s multi-layered support of independent film from his Utah abode has helped set in stone the machinations of American indie film. “Premiering at Sundance” once meant traveling from obscurity to the beating heart of the film world. A “Sundance movie” developed a connotation of both intrigue and, eventually, derision. These ideas have cooled over time as other festivals have begun taking up some of the space once fully dominated by Sundance, but Redford’s investment in artists (as founder, public face, and frequent master of ceremonies) inarguably changed the course of the film industry.
Redford is survived by his wife Sibylle Szaggars, his children Shauna Jean Redford and Amy Hart Redford, and seven grandchildren.
