Born August 18, 1936 in Santa Monica, California, (Charles) Robert Redford (Jr.) began his acting career in 1959.
First on Broadway with a minor role in Tall Story, Redford had an uncredited role in the 1960 film version. His first major role was in the 1960 TV version of The Iceman Cometh with Jason Robards (Jr.) In numerous TV shows over the next few years, his 1962 portrayal of Death in an episode of Twilight Zone opposite Gladys Cooper made audiences sit up and take notice. He had his first starring role on screen that same year in War Hunt.
Roles opposite Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover and This Property Is Condemned and Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park increased his visibility. His role in the latter was a reprise of his last Broadway role.
Redford achieved major stardom in a trio of 1969 films, Downhill Racer, Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, his iconic performance in the latter establishing the cool screen persona that would sustain his career.
Iconic performances in 1972’s The Candidate and Jeremiah Johnson led to two 1973 films that made him the screen’s number one box office star. Both The Way We Were opposite Barbra Streisand and The Sting, which reunited him with his Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid co-star, Paul Newman, were hugely successful. The Oscar winning The Sting also brought him his only Oscar nomination for acting.
The actor continued his major stardom with such films as 1975’s Three Days of the Condor, 1976’s All the President’s Men, and 1980’s Brubaker. That same year he made his directing debut with Ordinary People for which he won an Oscar for Best Director.
1985’s Out of Africa in which he starred opposite Meryl Streep, became the third Redford film to win a Best Picture Oscar following The Sting and Ordinary People.
Redford had purchased an entire ski area near Provo, Utah with the proceeds from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Downhill Racer in 1970 which he renamed Sundance. He subsequently founded the Sundance Institute on the property which took over management of the Utah Film Festival in 1985, officially renaming it the Sundance Film Festival in 1991. The Festival, held annually in January, is the premier venue for the first exhibition of independent films in any year.
Redford received his second Oscar nomination for directing for 1994’s Quiz Show. He received an honorary Oscar for career achievement at the 2001 awards and was Kennedy Center honoree in 2005.
As a director, Redford made 10 films, his last in 2014. As an actor, he made 82 including 1998’s The Horse Whisperer, 2005’s An Unfinished Life, 2007’s Lions for Lambs, 2013’s All Is Lost, 2015’s A Walk in the Woods, 2015’s Truth, 2017’s Our Souls at Night, and 2018’s The Old Man & the Gun. His last role was an uncredited one in 2025’s Dark Winds which he also produced.
Robert Redford died in his sleep at his beloved Sundance on September 16, 2025. He was 89.
ESSENTIAL FILMS
BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969), directed by George Roy Hill
Nominated for six Oscars and winner of four, this hugely popular western gave audiences of the day something hipper than a John Wayne western, yet with a lighter tone and less violence than a Sam Peckinpah western which traversed the same landscape. The pairing of superstar Paul Newman and emerging superstar Redford proved as fortuitous for the movie-going public as it did for the two stars. Co-staring Katharine Ross as Redford’s love interest, Burt Bacharach’s Oscar winning score and song, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” provided just the right touch as he romances her on his bicycle.
THE STING (1973), directed by George Roy Hill
Nominated for ten Oscars and winner of seven including Best Picture and Director, the film provided Redford with the only acting nomination of his legendary career. Marvin Hamlisch’s Oscar-winning ragtime-tinged score did even more for this film which reunited Newman, Redford and director Hill than Bacharach’s score did for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Co-starring Robert Shaw, Charles Durning, Ray Walson, and Eileen Brennan, Newman and Redford played double-dealing grifters in this one. Redford was also outstanding opposite Barbra Streisand in the same year’s The Way We Were.
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976), directed by Alan J. Pakula
Nominated for eight Oscars and winner of four, this uncanny political thriller played like a richly detailed mystery even though the audience then as now knew the outcome of the biggest U.S. political scandal of the Twentieth Century. Redford and Dustin Hoffman are superb as Woodward and Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who uncovered the details of the Watergate break-in. Jason Robards, who starred in the TV version of The Iceman Cometh in which Redford first attracted attention sixteen years earlier, won a much-deserved Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.
ORDINARY PEOPLE (1980), directed by Robert Redford
Redford made a sensational directorial debut, winning an Oscar for his direction, one of four out of seven nominations the film received. Redford’s knowledge of acting paid off handsomely in his direction of Timothy Hutton to an Oscar-winning performance as a troubled young man in the aftermath of a suicide attempt as well as Mary Tyler Moore playing against type as his cold mother and Donald Sutherland as his sensitive father. Judd Hirsch, like Moore, a TV comedy veteran, also amazed in his Oscar nominated portrayal of Hutton’s psychiatrist. Redford would have to wait fourteen years for his third Oscar nomination, his second for directing.
QUIZ SHOW (1994), directed by Robert Redford
Nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture and Director, Redford’s fourth film as a director also earned nominations for Paul Attanasio’s adapted about a notorious show business scandal of the late 1950s and for Best Supporting actor Paul Scofield. the film chronicles the events surrounding the unmasking of Charles Van Doren, the patrician son of one of America’s leasing literary families brilliantly played by Ralph Fiennes the year after after breakout performance in Schindler’s List. Scofield played his father Mark and with John Turturro also outstanding as Herbie Stempel, the hapless contestant picked to lose against Van Doren.
ROBERT REDFORD AND OSCAR
The Sting (1973) – Nominated – Best Actor
Ordinary People (1986) – Oscar – Best Director
Quiz Show (1982) – Nominated – Best Director
Honorary Award (2001) – Career Achievement Award
