Robert Redford - movie icon, environmentalist, champion of Native American rights and representation and founder of the Sundance Institute - has passed away at 89 in his home outside Provo, Utah.
Like Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck and Steve McQueen, Robert Redford was never about having a particularly wide range as an actor, but as a movie star in his prime, few could touch him.
“He’s a very instinctive, impulsive actor,” the late Sydney Pollack told Variety in 2002. “I don’t think there’s anything studied or premeditated about the work. He’s the opposite of the actor who wants to rehearse and pin things down.” - Variety, September 16, 2025
Via The Hollywood Progressive
He brought his good looks, ineffable charm and romantic appeal to heroes as well as antiheroes, from one of the outlaws in Sundance Kid to the Nixon-toppling journalist Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men to the well-meaning but naive political contender Bill McKay in Candidate. His sheen often contrasted with the jaundiced view of his pictures, particularly in the ’70s films that remain among his best; but he could use his appeal to equal and devastating effect in romance, notably opposite Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were (1973).
Behind the California-kid surface was a darker and more complicated figure. The very definition of a Hollywood star, he nonetheless saw himself as an outsider and spent much of his time living away from the epicenters of the industry — including at the Utah skiing resort that he turned into the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival.
He bestrode two worlds, his biographer, Michael Feeney Callan, wrote in 2011: “His life [was] peripatetic. He engaged [in] careers on the East Coast and West. It may not be a coincidence that his arts laboratory — his ‘great experiment’ [Sundance] is not too many miles from Promontory Summit, where, in 1869, the golden spike was hammered that joined the East Coast and West on the transcontinental railroad.” - The Hollywood Reporter, September 16, 2025
Via Movie Nation
Rhoda: Mary, please. You're not hearing me now. Newman, Redford, you, me. You can have first choice. I'll take leftovers. - The Mary Tyler Moore Show, 'Better Late... That's A Pun... Than Never' (1974)
Via The New York Times
Charles Robert Redford Jr was born in Santa Monica, California, on 18 August 1936 - the son of a milkman who later became an accountant with Standard Oil.
At school, he became part of a street gang and was arrested for "borrowing an automobile that had stolen jewellery in its trunk".
He won a scholarship to the University of Colorado thanks to his prowess at baseball, but was thrown out after 18 months for drunkenness. At the same time, his mother died - aged just 40.
Stricken with grief, he drifted for a while, finding work in the Californian oilfields - before travelling to Paris and Florence, where he studied art.
His sojourn in Europe encouraged him to take a fresh approach to the United States: "I began to look at my country from another point of view," he later said. - Via The BBC, September 16, 2025
Ultimately, Redford preferred characters that were a little offbeat - in keeping with his passion for independent cinema.
But he always insisted that his good looks hindered, rather than helped, him as an actor.
"The notion that you're not so much of an actor, you're just somebody that looks well. That was always hard for me," he said.
"I always took pride in whatever role I was playing; I would be that character." - The BBC, September 16, 2025
Via The New York Times
Like the greatest movie stars, Bob understands the power of restraint. You’re never going to get it all … and that’s the mystery … that’s what makes you want to keep looking at him. - Barbra Streisand, My Name Is Barbra (2023)
No comments:
Post a Comment