{"id":149523,"date":"2025-09-17T03:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T03:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/149523\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T03:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T03:36:08","slug":"robert-redford-american-actor-director-and-environmentalist-1936-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/149523\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Redford, American actor, director and environmentalist, 1936-2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Robert Redford, the golden-haired American star of films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President\u2019s Men, who later co-founded the Sundance Institute and championed environmentalist causes, has died at 89. His death at his home in Utah was announced by a publicist, though a cause was not disclosed.<\/p>\n

Redford was one of Hollywood\u2019s leading men of the postwar period, anchoring films that became popular classics with a sense of serious decency and later winning an Oscar as director for Ordinary People (1980). Yet even as his camera-ready face became a byword for all-American good looks, Redford cultivated an apartness from Hollywood, like his sometime screen partner, Paul Newman. After taking up residence in the mountains of Utah, he fostered the birth of the Sundance Film Festival, an essential alternative to the industry where he had excelled.<\/p>\n

He was born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California, to a milkman-turned-accountant and a strong-willed homemaker. By Redford\u2019s own account, he thought he might draw, paint or even become an animator, rather than act. But after moving to New York, he soon found success on the stage, beginning with a small role in Tall Story (1959) and within a few years hit pay dirt as a newly wed in Neil Simon\u2019s Barefoot in the Park on Broadway. Mike Nichols directed the play and later considered Redford for The Graduate, but the star\u2019s breezy glow just didn\u2019t seem to match the role of nervous Benjamin Braddock \u2014 which went to Dustin Hoffman.<\/p>\n

Redford\u2019s stardom was secured soon enough as one half of a train-robbing duo in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the top-grossing film of 1969. Playing it quiet and wry opposite a rambunctious Newman, Redford seemed to relish the fresh-faced role and set a mould for later crowd-pleasing performances by forging a good-natured connection with the cinema audience. He\u2019d later count Butch Cassidy as his favourite film because, he said, he liked doing the stunts and being out in nature.<\/p>\n

\"WithWith Paul Newman in \u2018Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid\u2019 (1969) \u00a9 Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n

Redford\u2019s roles could reflect a sympathy for social issues, as in This Property Is Condemned (1966) and Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969), and he garnered admirers over the years for the election satire The Candidate (1972). But he would also embrace the matinee-idol glow that led some critics to underrate him, with films like the 1973 romantic period drama The Way We Were \u2014 opposite a beaming Barbra Streisand \u2014 and the ill-fated adaptation a year later of The Great Gatsby \u2014 as the all-American anti-hero of the title.<\/p>\n

Far from hogging the limelight, Redford excelled as a scene partner to his co-stars (in a way returning to the byplay of Butch Cassidy). All the President\u2019s Men, the 1976 chronicle of the expos\u00e9 of Watergate that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, is a consummate two-hander with Hoffman. If Redford had until then looked too clean-cut to be properly considered a counterculture figure, he showed his bona fides with a seriousness of purpose as journalist Bob Woodward.<\/p>\n

\"DustinRedford as Bob Woodward, right, and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein in \u2018All the President\u2019s Men\u2019 (1976) \u00a9 Alamy<\/p>\n

That knack for collaboration went for actresses too, with Jane Fonda on the screen version of Barefoot in the Park (1967) and on The Way We Were with Streisand, who in a social media post on Tuesday<\/a> remembered filming as \u201cEvery day\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. Exciting, intense, and pure joy\u201d. His continued stardom in the 1980s had as its capstone a sun-kissed role opposite Meryl Streep in the Oscar-friendly adaptation of Isak Dinesen\u2019s Out of Africa (1985). Streep likewise paid tribute online: \u201cOne of the lions has passed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even as Redford was enjoying continued success, he had opened an entirely new chapter with the Sundance Film Festival, which was formed out of the US Film Festival in 1984 and officially renamed in 1991. Redford had laid the groundwork by purchasing land in Utah and inviting young filmmakers to his institute to develop projects. He would become a vital face of the festival for years thereafter. Actor Ethan Hawke said on Facebook that Redford was \u201cour ultimate champion of independent film\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"RobertWith Jane Fonda in \u2018Barefoot in the Park\u2019 (1967) \u00a9 Getty Images<\/p>\n

Beyond the screen, Redford supported environmental causes such as land conservation, climate change awareness and clean energy initiatives. He lobbied for legislation that led to the establishment of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. His death garnered respectful tributes from both Unesco and fellow actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio.<\/p>\n

Redford continued acting and directing works ranging from picturesque prestige dramas (Quiz Show, A River Runs Through It) to socially conscious work (Lions for Lambs). His post-2000 roles did not attain the pop prominence of 1993\u2019s Indecent Proposal or 1998\u2019s The Horse Whisperer, but a definitive late triumph came with All Is Lost<\/a> in 2013. As a man battling to survive on a boat adrift at sea, he seemed to relish showing his mettle in an unadorned role that got his hair mussed, far from the klieg lights of Hollywood.<\/p>\n

He was married twice and is survived by his wife Sibylle Szaggars and two children from his first marriage to Lola Van Wagenen.<\/p>\n