Robert Redford, Hollywood Star and Sundance Visionary, Dies at 89
If it is possible to be both larger than life and understated, Robert Redford would be the person who managed the feat. The big screen idol of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men became a legendary, Oscar-winning director, helming classics like Ordinary People, A River Runs Through It, and Quiz Show. His work in front, behind, and well away from the camera equaled a singular life in the arts. Redford was an outspoken advocate for environmental causes and the rights of individuals to express themselves as they were, and the driving force behind the creation of the Sundance Film Festival. He passed away on Tuesday morning at his home in Utah at the age of 89.
Redford was a four-time Academy Award nominee and an honorary Oscar recipient. He was the kind of performer, director, and force in Hollywood who was larger than any specific accolade. Redford was one of the genuinely iconic stars of the screen of the past half-century, whose body of work included some of the most compelling and challenging depictions of the country he lived in, loved, and challenged. Those roles included playing irreverent U.S. Senate hopeful Bill McKay in 1972’s The Candidate, the grifter Johnny Hooker, opposite Paul Newman’s Henry Gondroff, in George Roy Hill’s 1973 The Sting (surprisingly, his only Oscar nomination as an actor), introverted C.I.A. codebreaker Turner in Sydney Pollack’s 1975 thriller Three Days of the Condor, and director Alan J. Pakula’s aforementioned classic All the President’s Men, in 1976, in which Redford played Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward who, alongside Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), investigated the Watergate scandal.
He was as comfortable in comedies and romantic dramas as he was in political thrillers—his work in Barefoot in the Park in 1967, The Way We Were in 1973, and Out of Africa in 1985 saw him matched with Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, and Meryl Streep, respectively.
Redford used his massive star power to advocate for and make films that dealt with some of life’s weightiest topics, whether they be political corruption or grief. When he began directing in his 40s, he won an Oscar for directing the staggering Ordinary People in 1980, which was centered on a family’s implosion after a child’s death, and which also took home the Best Picture Oscar. In 1992, Redford directed A River Runs Through It, adapted from Norman Maclean’s story, which starred a young Brad Pitt and was a beautifully shot, elegiac story about Montana fly fishermen considering life’s biggest questions. It was nominated for three Academy Awards. His directorial work in his 1994 hit Quiz Show, centered on a 1950s television scandal, was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
In 1981, Redford founded the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit created to help young, emerging filmmakers find a foothold in the industry. In 1984, he took over a film festival in Utah and a few years after that, he renamed it after the institute. The Sundance Film Festival turned Park City, for a week or two a year, into the hottest film hub in the world. It launched the careers of dozens, then hundreds, of star filmmakers, including Steven Soderbergh, Darren Aronofsky, Quentin Tarantino, Nicole Holofcener, Ava DuVernay, Robert Rodriguez, Ryan Coogler, and Chloé Zhao. It has been at the forefront of progressive causes, became a major launching pad for documentaries, and more. It grew, in fact, larger and more influential than Redford himself had possibly intended or imagined. He was not the biggest fan, to put it mildly, of all the hoopla associated with the festival that wasn’t about film itself.
He was a passionate environmentalist and a supporter of Native American and LGBTQ rights throughout his life—he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2016. His retirement from acting came nearly 8 years ago, after 2018’s The Old Man and the Gun, yet he remained engaged with the industry (he was an executive producer on AMC’s Dark Winds, which he had an uncredited cameo in early this year). He was a force of nature, an impossibly charming onscreen presence with a ferocious work ethic and a lifelong desire to tell important stories and do important work. In fact, in 2013, he was the sole performer in J.C. Chandor’s brilliant adventure film All is Lost, when he played a sailor staring mortality in the face while adrift at sea. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him—at 76 years old, he was still a commanding screen presence—while he managed to make the business of being resourceful and resolute in the face of overwhelming odds and immense pressure look not only inspiring, but beautiful.
Featured image: Robert Redford walks the red carpet ahead of the ‘Our Souls At Night’ screening during the 74th Venice Film Festival at Sala Grande on September 1, 2017 in Venice, Italy.
