From Newsgroup: alt.obituaries
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/movies/robert-redford-dead.html
Robert Redford, Screen Idol Turned Director and Activist, Dies at 89
He made serious topics like grief and political corruption resonate with
the masses, in no small part because of his own star power.
By Brooks Barnes
Sept. 16, 2025
Robert Redford, the big-screen charmer turned Oscar-winning director whose
hit movies often helped America make sense of itself and who, offscreen, evangelized for environmental causes and fostered the Sundance-centered independent film movement, died early Tuesday morning at his home in Utah.
He was 89.
His death, in the mountains outside Provo, was announced in a statement by Cindi Berger, the chief executive of the publicity firm Rogers & Cowan
PMK. She said he had died in his sleep but did not provide a specific
cause. He was in rCLthe place he loved surrounded by those he loved,rCY the statement said.
With a distaste for HollywoodrCOs dumb-it-down approach to moviemaking, Mr. Redford typically demanded that his films carry cultural weight, in many
cases making serious topics like grief (familial, societal) and political corruption resonate with audiences, in no small part because of his
immense star power. Unlike other stars of his caliber, he took risks by exploring dark and challenging material; while some people might only have seen him as a sun-kissed matinee god, his filmography rCo like his personal life rCo contained currents of tragedy and sadness.
As an actor, his biggest films included rCLButch Cassidy and the Sundance KidrCY (1969), with its loving look at rogues in a dying Old West, and rCLAll the PresidentrCOs MenrCY (1976), about the journalistic pursuit of President Richard M. Nixon in the Watergate era. (Mr. Redford played Bob Woodward
and used his clout in Hollywood to bring the book of the same name, by Mr. Woodward and Carl Bernstein, to the screen.) In rCLThree Days of the CondorrCY (1975) Mr. Redford was an introverted C.I.A. analyst caught in a murderous cat-and-mouse game. rCLThe StingrCY (1973), about Depression-era grifters, gave Mr. Redford his first and only Oscar nomination as an actor.
Mr. Redford was one of HollywoodrCOs preferred leads for decades, whether in comedies, dramas or thrillers; he had range. Studios often sold him as a
sex symbol. Although he was a subtle performer with a definite magnetism,
his body of work as a romantic leading man owed a great deal to the
commanding actresses who were paired with him rCo Jane Fonda in rCLBarefoot in the ParkrCY (1967), Barbra Streisand in rCLThe Way We WererCY (1973), Meryl Streep in rCLOut of AfricarCY (1985).
rCLRedford has never been so radiantly glamorous,rCY the critic Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, rCLas when we saw him through Barbra StreisandrCOs infatuated eyes.rCY
He branched into directing in his 40s and won an Academy Award for his
first effort, rCLOrdinary PeoplerCY (1980), about an upper-middle-class familyrCOs disintegration after a sonrCOs death rCo a story that reflected the repressed grief and emotional silence in his own family after the death of
his mother when he was a teenager. rCLOrdinary PeoplerCY won three other Oscars, including for best picture.
His next film as a director, rCLThe Milagro Beanfield WarrCY (1988), a comedic drama about a New Mexican farmer denied water rights by uncaring
developers, was a flop. But Mr. Redford stubbornly refused to pursue less esoteric material. Instead, he directed and produced rCLA River Runs Through ItrCY (1992), a spare period drama about Montana fly fishermen pondering existential questions, and rCLQuiz ShowrCY (1994), about a notorious 1950s television scandal. rCLQuiz ShowrCY was nominated for four Oscars, including best picture and best director.
Perhaps Mr. RedfordrCOs greatest cultural impact was as a make-it-up-as-he- went independent film impresario. In 1981, he founded the Sundance
Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating fresh cinematic voices. He took over a struggling film festival in Utah in 1984 and renamed it after
the institute a few years later. (He had been a local since 1961, having
spent some of his early earnings as an actor on two acres of land in Provo Canyon. He often said he liked Utah because it gave him a sense of peace
and was the antithesis of Hollywood superficiality.)
The Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, became a global showcase and freewheeling marketplace for American films made outside the Hollywood
system. With heat generated by the discovery of talents like Steven Soderbergh, who unveiled his rCLSex, Lies and VideotaperCY at the festival in 1989, Sundance became synonymous with the creative cutting edge.
The directors Quentin Tarantino, James Wan, Darren Aronofsky, Nicole Holofcener, David O. Russell, Ryan Coogler, Robert Rodriguez, Chlo|- Zhao
and Ava DuVernay were nurtured by Sundance early in their careers.
Sundance also grew into one of the worldrCOs top showcases for
documentaries, in particular those focused on progressive topics like reproductive rights, L.G.B.T.Q. issues and climate change.
Mr. Redford complained bitterly about the commercial whirlwind the
festival created as it grew to more than 85,000 attendees in 2025 from a
few hundred in the early 1980s.
rCLI want the ambush marketers rCo the vodka brands and the gift-bag people and the Paris Hiltons rCo to go away forever,rCY Mr. Redford told a reporter during the 2012 festival, as he trudged in snow boots to a screening, a
young assistant behind him struggling to keep up. rCLThey have nothing to do with whatrCOs going on here!rCY
Preferring life on his secluded Utah ranch, Mr. Redford created the image
of a reluctant star. His Hollywood career, he insisted with characteristic orneriness, was incidental to his real concerns, one of which was the environment. In many ways, he created the actor-as-environmentalist
archetype that stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo would adopt.
Mr. Redford did not like to be called an activist, a label he found too severe. But an activist he was.
In 1970, he successfully campaigned against a six-lane highway that was proposed in a Utah canyon (where one year he received eight tickets for speeding, rounding the curves in a Porsche Carrera).
For five decades, Mr. Redford was a trustee of the Natural Resources
Defense Council. In 1976, he used his clout to help block the construction
of a coal-fired power plant in Utah that had been championed by business leaders as a crucial source of jobs. His campaign against the plant
included a 36-page photo spread in National Geographic magazine featuring himself on horseback on the scenic Kaiparowits plateau, where construction
was to begin. His efforts sparked a backlash rCo he was called a liberal carpetbagger rCo and residents of one Utah town burned him in effigy.
From time to time, people with similar political priorities encouraged him
to run for office. He brushed such chatter aside, having become
disillusioned with government in the late 1970s, when he was elected commissioner of the Provo Canyon sewer district. (He had sought the office
in an effort to protect the Provo Canyon area near his home from
development and pollution. But he quickly encountered bureaucracy, which reinforced his belief that independent activism and storytelling through
film were more effective tools for change.)
rCLI was born with a hard eye,rCY he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. rCLThe
way I saw things, I would see what was wrong. I could see what could be better. I developed kind of a dark view of life, looking at my own
country.rCY
A California Youth
Charles Robert Redford Jr. was born on Aug. 18, 1936, in Santa Monica,
Calif. His parents, Charles Redford and Martha Hart, married three months later. (Early in his career, 20th Century Fox publicists officially placed
Mr. RedfordrCOs birth in 1937, a falsehood that was often repeated over the years.)
After working as a milkman, Mr. RedfordrCOs mercurial father became an accountant and was eventually employed by Standard Oil of California. His mother died in 1955, when Mr. Redford was in his late teens; the cause was
a blood disorder associated with the birth of twin girls, who had lived
only a short while, leaving Mr. Redford an only child. Her death left him angry and disillusioned.
rCLIrCOd had religion pushed on me since I was a kid,rCY he later told a biographer, Michael Feeney Callan. rCLBut after Mom died, I felt betrayed by God.rCY
Later in life, Mr. Redford, in dozens of interviews, told and retold the
story of his California youth. It was an oral history in which the details sometimes shifted. He liked to cast himself in memory as a juvenile delinquent, sometimes mentioning gang fights, other times hubcap stealing
and nights spent in jail. rCLThere was great fear I was going to end up a bum,rCY he told TV Guide in 2002. He found Van Nuys, the Los Angeles neighborhood where the family lived, to be unbearably conformist and dull
rCo revealing a rebellious nature that never left him.
Little was ever mentioned of early show business connections that
suggested the possibility of a screen future, although he spoke about
getting laughed off the Warner Bros. lot at age 15 when asking for stunt
work.
In fact, at schools in west Los Angeles, he kept company with children of
the screenwriter Robert Rossen (rCLThe HustlerrCY), the actor Zachary Scott (rCLMildred PiercerCY) and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer president Dore Schary. In 1959, Mr. Schary produced a Broadway play, rCLThe Highest Tree,rCY in which Mr. Redford had one of his first stage roles.
He had made his Broadway debut earlier that year in rCLTall Story,rCY in which he had a one-line part. His most successful Broadway appearance was as an uptight lawyer in the Neil Simon comedy about newlyweds, rCLBarefoot in the Park,rCY in 1963, directed by Mike Nichols and co-starring Elizabeth Ashley
as a free-spirited wife.
After high school, Mr. Redford attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship, but he soon dropped out, having chafed at too much rCLbureaucracy,rCY as he put it. He had also developed a fondness for all- night beer parties.
For more than a year he bounced around Europe, where he studied art at the |ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, aspired to paint, and rCo working through
what he later described as profound depression rCo sold sidewalk sketches
for pocket cash. (He had been a talented illustrator since high school.)
Back in Los Angeles, he did oil-field work and met several Mormon students
who were sent to proselytize after their first year at Brigham Young University in Utah. He dated one of them, Lola Van Wagenen, and married
her in 1958.
The couple would become rooted in Utah. rCLItrCOs not trying to pretend to be something itrCOs not,rCY he told Rocky Mountain magazine in 1978, comparing Utah with Los Angeles, which he called phony and superficial. rCLIt doesnrCOt invite you in and then kick you in the shins.rCY
Film critics loved to kick Mr. Redford.
In 1974, his performance as Jay Gatsby in rCLThe Great GatsbyrCY received near-universal disdain, with Ms. Kael writing that Mr. Redford rCLcouldnrCOt transcend his immaculate self-absorption.rCY Robert Mazzocco, a critic for
The New York Review of Books, wrote that Mr. Redford rCLhas the emotions of
a telephone recording from Con Ed.rCY
While the movie was a box-office hit, the response was so harsh that The
New York Times weighed in with an article bearing the headline rCLWhy Are
They Being So Mean to rCyThe Great GatsbyrCO?rCY The writer, Foster Hirsch, then
enumerated the reasons. rCLGatsby is one of the great losers in American literature,rCY the article said. rCLDoes Redford, with his male model looks, answer such a description?rCY
Box-Office Gold
Mr. Redford enjoyed being a sex symbol, except when he didnrCOt. rCLThis glamour image can be a real handicap,rCY he complained in a 1974 profile in The Times.
Nonetheless, it was his broad grin, tousled reddish-blond hair and all- American look (rCLWASP jockrCY in his own words) that first won the audience to his side. rCLButch Cassidy and the Sundance KidrCY was a well-reviewed picture, but it succeeded at the box office in large part because Mr.
Redford rCo with deft comedic timing honed from Neil Simon and years of TV work rCo was paired with another matinee idol, Paul Newman. They recaptured their chemistry in 1973 for the same director, George Roy Hill, with rCLThe Sting.rCY
Reviewing rCLThe StingrCY for The Times, Vincent Canby described the film as rCLMr. Newman and Mr. Redford, dressed in best, fit-to-kill, snap-brim hat, thirties splendor, looking like a couple of guys in old Arrow shirt ads.rCY
His other acting successes included rCLJeremiah JohnsonrCY (1972), about a legend-in-his-own-time mountain man, and rCLThe NaturalrCY (1984), the quintessentially American story of a man who gets a second chance at his
dream baseball career. rCLSneakersrCY (1992), a breezy caper starring Mr. Redford as a security hacker, reflected his occasional willingness to
embrace popcorn cinema.
His riskier films rCo pictures that got made based on his star power but defied expectation rCo included the ski drama rCLDownhill RacerrCY (1969), in which he played an arrogant athlete, and rCLThe CandidaterCY (1972), a coldly comic commentary on the bewildering state of American politics. He managed
to turn rCLThe Great Waldo PepperrCY (1975), about disillusionment in America after World War I, and rCLThe Electric HorsemanrCY (1979), a comedic romance about a washed-up rodeo star, into box-office hits.
Mr. RedfordrCOs biggest ticket seller as an actor (not counting two late- career Marvel films in which he played supporting roles) was the 1993
morality tale rCLIndecent Proposal,rCY which co-starred Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson and took in $267 million, or $590 million in todayrCOs dollars. In her rCLIndecent ProposalrCY review for The Times, Janet Maslin called Mr. Redford rCLone of the screenrCOs great flirts.rCY (Mr. Redford later expressed regret about rCLIndecent Proposal.rCY He said that he had signed on because he was intrigued by the psychological and ethical questions it raised about
love, fidelity and the corrupting power of money, but that those themes
were flattened in the sensationalistic final version of the film.)
Mr. RedfordrCOs marriage to Ms. Van Wagenen produced four children: Shauna, Amy, David James (known as Jamie) and Scott, who died of sudden infant
death syndrome at 2-+ months. The marriage ended in divorce in 1985. Mr. Redford married Sibylle Szaggars, a German artist he had met at the
Sundance Institute, in 2009.
By then, Mr. Redford had seen his family through grief and trauma that occasionally rivaled what he portrayed in rCLOrdinary People.rCY In 1983, his daughter ShaunarCOs boyfriend, Sidney Lee Wells, was shot dead in Colorado. The incident fed Mr. RedfordrCOs reclusive tendencies, according to rCLRobert Redford: The BiographyrCY (2011), by Mr. Callan. Shauna subsequently
survived a gruesome car accident that left her vehicle submerged in water, with her inside.
Just as Mr. Redford began rCLQuiz Show,rCY he saw his son Jamie through two liver transplants that overcame the effects of a chronic disease. Jamie
died of cancer of the bile ducts in 2020 at 58.
In addition to his wife, Mr. RedfordrCOs survivors include two daughters, Shauna Redford Schlosser and Amy Redford, and seven grandchildren.
Mr. RedfordrCOs finances suffered with the years, partly because some
business ventures were ill-timed. A planned movie theater chain, Sundance Cinemas, faltered in 2000 when a partner filed for bankruptcy protection.
In 2002, Mr. Redford raised cash by selling half of his Sundance Catalog,
a mail-order venture. A more bitter pill was the 2008 sale of his stake in
the Sundance Channel cable network to Rainbow Media, which operated the
rival Independent Film Channel.
The financial shake-up may have added to his late-life reasons for pushing
his craft as an actor. In 2013, he was the sole performer in rCLAll Is Lost,rCY about a sailor struggling to survive at sea. The role required Mr. Redford, then in his late 70s, to spend long days in a water tank on the movierCOs Baja California set.
rCLAll Is Lost,rCY which had almost no dialogue, turned into a disappointment for Mr. Redford: He was snubbed by Oscar voters. The weathered star in
turn blasted the filmrCOs distributor, Roadside Attractions.
rCLWe had no campaign to cross over into the mainstream,rCY he told reporters with signature directness at a Sundance news conference. rCLThey didnrCOt want to spend the money, or they were incapable.rCY
Mr. RedfordrCOs final acting roles included rCLOur Souls at NightrCY (2017), a twilight-years romance co-starring Ms. Fonda, and rCLThe Old Man and the GunrCY (2018), a drama, based on a true story, about a septuagenarian bank robber. He retired from acting in part because he was increasingly
immobile; decades of riding horses and playing tennis had wreaked havoc on
his 5-foot-10 frame.
Throughout his career, Mr. Redford pushed and questioned and then
questioned and pushed. His tenaciousness served him well as early as 1969, when he was preparing to play the Sundance Kid. The president of 20th
Century Fox, Richard D. Zanuck, told Mr. Redford to shave the bandit
mustache he had grown for the role. He refused.
rCLIt was authentic,rCY Mr. Redford told Mr. Callan, his biographer. rCLI got my
way.rCY
Michael Cieply contributed reporting.
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