Robert Redford, the dashing actor and Oscar-winning director who eschewed his standing as a Hollywood main man to champion causes near his coronary heart, has died, based on his publicist Cindi Berger, Chairman and CEO of Rogers and Cowan PMK.
He was 89.
“Robert Redford passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah–the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved. He will be missed greatly,” Berger stated in a press release to NCS. “The family requests privacy.”
Known for his starring roles in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men,” Redford additionally directed award-winning movies reminiscent of “Ordinary People” and “A River Runs Through It.”
His ardour for the artwork of filmmaking led to his creation of the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit that helps unbiased movie and theater and is thought for its annual Sundance Film Festival.
Redford was additionally a devoted environmentalist, transferring to Utah in 1961 and main efforts to protect the pure panorama of the state and the American West.
Redford acted nicely into his later years, reuniting with Jane Fonda within the 2017 Netflix movie “Our Souls at Night.” The following yr, he starred in “The Old Man & the Gun” at age 82, a movie he stated could be his final – though he stated he wouldn’t contemplate retiring.
“To me, retirement means stopping something or quitting something,” he informed CBS Sunday Morning in 2018. “There’s this life to lead, why not live it as much as you can as long as you can?”
In October 2020, Redford voiced his concern in regards to the lack of concentrate on local weather change within the midst of devastating wildfires within the western United States, in an opinion piece he wrote for NCS.
That identical month, Redford’s 58-year-old son died from most cancers.
David James Redford – the third of 4 youngsters born to Robert Redford and former spouse Lola Van Wagenen – had adopted in his father’s footsteps as an activist, filmmaker and philanthropist.
Born in Santa Monica, California, close to Los Angeles, in 1936, Redford’s father labored lengthy hours as a milkman and an accountant, later transferring the household to a bigger dwelling in close by Van Nuys.
“I didn’t see him much,” Redford recalled of his father, on “Inside the Actor’s Studio” in 2005.
Because his household couldn’t afford a babysitter, Redford spent hours within the youngsters’s part at the native library the place he grew to become fascinated with books on Greek and Roman mythology.
Yet Redford was hardly a mannequin pupil.
“I had no patience … I was not inspired,” Redford recalled. “It was more interesting to me to mess around and to adventure beyond the parameters that I was growing up in.”
Drawn to arts and sports activities – and a life outdoors of sprawling Los Angeles – Redford earned a scholarship to play baseball at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1955. That identical yr, his mom died.
“She was very young, she wasn’t even 40,” he stated.
Redford stated his mom was “always very supportive (of my career)” — extra so than his dad.
“My father came of age during the Depression and he was afraid to take chances … so he wanted the straight and narrow path for me, which I was just not meant to be on,” he stated. “My mom, it doesn’t matter what I did, she was at all times forgiving and supportive and felt that I may do something.
“When I left and went to Colorado and she died, I realized I never had a chance to thank her.”
Redford quickly turned to consuming, misplaced his scholarship and ultimately was requested to go away the college. He labored as a “roustabout” for the Standard Oil Company and saved his earnings to proceed his artwork research in Europe.
“(I) lived hand to mouth, but that was fine,” Redford stated of his time in Europe. “I wanted that adventure. I wanted the experience of seeing what other cultures were like.”
When he returned to the US, Redford started learning theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.
Shy and closed off, Redford stated he didn’t slot in with the opposite drama college students who have been keen to indicate off their appearing abilities. After a efficiency in entrance of his class with a fellow pupil that led to frustration and catastrophe, Redford stated his trainer pulled him apart and inspired him to stay with appearing.
In 1959, Redford graduated from the academy and obtained his first appearing position on an episode of “Perry Mason.” His appearing profession was “uphill from there,” he stated.
His massive appearing break got here in 1963, when he starred in Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park” on Broadway – a task he would later reprise on the large display screen with Jane Fonda.
Around this time, Redford married Lola Van Wagenen and began a household. His first baby, Scott, died from sudden toddler dying syndrome just some months after his start in 1959. Shauna was born in 1960, David in 1962, and Amy in 1970.
As his appearing profession was taking off, Redford and his household moved to Utah in 1961 the place he purchased two acres of land for just $500 and constructed a cabin himself.
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“I discovered how important nature was in my life, and I wanted to be where nature was extreme and where I thought it could maybe be everlasting,” he informed NCS.
Redford made a reputation for himself as a number one man in 1969 when he starred reverse Paul Newman – already a serious star – in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” The Western a few pair of outlaws gained 4 Academy Awards.
Redford stated he “will forever be indebted” to Newman, whom he credited with serving to him get the position. The two actors had nice on-screen chemistry, grew to become lifelong pals and reunited in “The Sting” in 1973, which gained the Academy Award for greatest image.
Redford starred in a string of hit films all through the Nineteen Seventies: “Jeremiah Johnson”; “The Way We Were,” co-starring Barbra Streisand; “The Great Gatsby”; and with Dustin Hoffman in 1976’s “All The President’s Men,” in regards to the Watergate scandal.
Teaming up with director Sydney Pollack on “Jeremiah Johnson,” Redford fought with the studio to get the movie made the best way he wished – a precursor to his profession as a director and his help for unbiased filmmaking.
“It was a battle from the get-go,” Redford informed “Inside The Actor’s Studio.” “They (the studio) said … ‘You’ve got $4 million, put it in the bank in Salt Lake City, you can shoot wherever you want, but that’s it. If it goes over, it comes out of your hide.’”
With spare dialogue and beautiful surroundings, the movie tells the story of a Mexican War veteran who has left the battlefield to outlive as a trapper within the American West.
It was launched greater than three years after it was made as a result of, based on Redford, the studio’s gross sales chief thought the movie was “so unusual” that it wouldn’t discover an viewers.
“Jeremiah Johnson” ended up grossing practically $45 million. It wasn’t the one time Redford’s ardour for the artwork of filmmaking put him at odds with the studios that funded his work.
“The sad thing you have to work against, as a filmmaker, is held opinions about what works or doesn’t work,” Redford stated. “Sports movies don’t work, political movies don’t work, movies about the press don’t work – so I’ve done three of them.”
Redford made his directing debut in 1980 with “Ordinary People,” a drama about an sad suburban household which earned the Academy Award for Best Picture and one other one for him as greatest director. He continued starring in hit movies reminiscent of “The Natural” in 1984, which tapped into his ardour for baseball, and 1993’s “An Indecent Proposal,” which paired him with a a lot youthful Demi Moore.
He later directed the 1993 movie “A River Runs Through It,” which gained three Academy Awards, 1994’s “Quiz Show” and “The Horse Whisperer” in 1998, which he additionally starred in.
Ruggedly good-looking, Redford was typically forged because the romantic main man in movies reminiscent of “Out of Africa” in 1985, however he wasn’t at all times snug with the label and feared being typecast.
“I didn’t see myself the way others saw me and I was feeling kind of trapped because I couldn’t go outside the box of … good-looking leading man,” he stated. “It was very flattering, but it was feeling restrictive … so it took many years to break loose of that.”
Redford’s ardour for the surroundings and unbiased filmmaking merged when he based the Sundance Institute in 1981. The nonprofit helps “risk-taking and new voices in American film” in addition to theater, and Redford’s Sundance resort in a canyon above Provo, Utah, hosts annual workshops for playwrights and screenwriters.
Each yr Redford’s institute holds the Sundance Film Festival in Utah – the biggest annual showcase within the United States for unbiased movie. Many younger filmmakers obtained their massive breaks at Sundance, together with Steven Soderbergh with “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” in 1989, Quentin Tarantino with “Reservoir Dogs” in 1992 and Ryan Coogler with 2013’s “Fruitvale Station.”
Redford’s lifelong impression on the movie trade was acknowledged in 2002 with an honorary Oscar.
In his later years, Redford by no means misplaced his ardour for storytelling via movie and remained an outspoken champion of environmental causes. He continuously demurred when requested about retiring.
“I want to make the most of what I’ve been given,” Redford informed NCS’s Christiane Amanpour in 2015. “You keep pushing yourself forward, you try new things and that’s invigorating.”
This story has been up to date.