October 7, 2025

Robert Redford, icon and director of Hollywood, died at 89

0
robert-redford-nl.jpg


The actor who became director and activist Robert Redford, one of the most famous men in Hollywood and an influential supporter of the independent film, died at the age of 89.

His advertisement Cindi Berger confirmed death at CBC News on Tuesday, saying that he died in his house in Sundance in the Utah mountains, “the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved.”

Redford used the millions he made to launch the Sundance Institute and Festival in the 1970s, promoting independent cinema long before small and original were in fashion.

“Robert Redford was the Golden Boy,” said Sean P. means, editor -in -chief of the Salt Lake Tribune, who was previously the film critic of the newspaper for 25 years.

If Redford represented the richest of us in The Grand Gatsbyto race heart in romantic roles like Out of Africaor play an outlaw in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance KidMeans that he had “a beautiful amazing appearance that (leaving it) also adapts to the spaces of society”.

Baseball player, then painter, then actor

Born in the city of Los Angeles Beach, Santa Monica, on August 18, 1936, which he described as a “family of the lower working class”, Redford won a university baseball purse but lost it after spending too much time to party.

Deciding that he wanted to be an artist, Redford has moved to Europe, spending time in France and Italy to try to sell his paintings on the street. Back in the United States, he signed up for a dramatic school to try the conception of the theatrical ensemble. Michael Feeney Callan, biographer and friend of Redford, told CBC News Network that Redford was initially skeptical about a career in front of the camera.

“The idea of ​​being an actor has never been in his match plan,” said Callan. “By osmosis, celebrity has arrived at him.”

Four actors and actresses in a black and white photo pose for a photo on a red carpet
In this May 7, 1972, photo on the left, actor Robert Redford and his wife Lola Redford (now Van Wagenen), and director Sydney Pollack and his wife Claire Griswold arrive at the festival palace for the presentation of the film Jeremiah Johnson in Cannes, in France. (Jean-Jacques Levy / The Associated Press)

But he was convinced to go on stage, and in 1959, he was a full -time interpreter in Broadway and then found work on television.

Redford made his cinema debut in 1962 in a low -budget film entitled RescueBut first drew attention in Barefoot in the parkFaced with Jane Fonda.

Redford remained better known for the first two films he made with Paul Newman: The Western Caper from 1969 Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid And The biteWho have both become classics.

He never won the best actor Oscar, but the first release of Redford as a director – the 1980 family drama Ordinary people – Won for the best film and the best director.

Since the 1980s, he has devoted more time to the production of films and to the creation of the Sundance Institute – a workshop all year round for budding filmmakers – and Sundance Festival, which has become one of the most influential independent windows in the world.

Listen to | The director remembers the Hollywood icon:

In this caseThe director of Robert Redford is film film remembers the Hollywood icon: “It was all”

Tributes flock to the legendary Hollywood actor Robert Redford, who died on September 16 at the age of 89. JC Chandor who made All Is Lost, one of the last great films with Redford with it, spoke as it occurs Nile Köksal about what it was to work with him.

A representative of the Sundance Institute expressed his sadness to the loss of their “founder and friend”.

“Bob’s vision of a space and a platform for independent voices launched a movement which, more than four decades later, inspired generations of artists and redefined cinema in the United States and in the world,” the statement said. “Beyond his enormous contributions to culture as a whole, we will miss his generosity, his target, his curiosity, his rebellious spirit and his love for the creative process.”

Redford remained active in films as an actor and producer until the end of his life. In 2017, he found funded for Netflix drama Our souls at nightA romance between a widow and a widower.

A blond man on the left and a blonde woman on a right smile together on a red carpet
Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, stars of Netflix’s Our Souls at Night, during the film’s launch party in September 2017. (Marion Curtis / Starpix / Netflix)

“I live for sex scenes with him,” said journalists when the film was created in Venice. “It’s a big kiss, so it was fun to kiss her in her twenties and kiss her again in my 80th birthday.”

A privacy in Utah

While Redford has taken on the importance of his role of Sundance Kid, he never met with his celebrity status, or the role of male starlet that followed him in the sixties.

“People were so busy telling my appearance, it is a miracle that I did not become a drop of self-aware protoplasm. It’s not easy to be Robert Redford,” he said in New York once.

The Callan biographer said that Redford revealed a layer at a time – which is why the documentation of his life took 15 years.

Look | Redford’s biographer on his effortless charisma:

Robert Redford’s biographer on the work of the famous actor, Drive – and charism

Listen to the biographer of Robert Redford, Michael Feeney Callan, to speak to Heather Hiscox of CBC on the art of the actor – and the heritage of a man who was always in motion and “poetic by nature”.

“He said very early: ‘We will do it in two bits. There will be the celebrity of me, and there will be the Me Me, “recalls Callan.

“He was very good to compartmentalize his life.”

In the early 1970s, Redford fell in love with the Utah campaign after his first wife Lola Van Wagenen presented it. By seeing a career success, Redford bought a small land in Utah, built a cabin there and withdrew in the state to take advantage of an unknown level of intimacy of most superstars.

“He fell in love with Utah,” said means. “It became his refuge … The place he could move away from Hollywood.”

Redford was cited once saying: “Some people have an analysis. I have Utah.”

Redford was married in Van Wagenen for more than 25 years before their divorce in 1985. In 2009, he married for the second time, to the German artist and long -standing partner Sibylle Szaggars.

Look | Redford weighed on American patriotism in 2010:

Throwback: what American patriotism looked like in Robert Redford

The actor, director and activist Robert Redford died Tuesday morning at the age of 89. He was known to have spent his time of work leave on causes close to him, in particular by weighing on political issues and his environmental activism. Redford sat with the CBC in 2010 to promote his film The Conspirator.

Other causes

According to means, the Sundance Institute he founded not only supported the young independent filmmakers of Young, outsider “before his name is even an independent film” But also helped forge the local film industry of UTAH.

“A lot of filmmakers … came to Sundance for the Film Festival, saw what UTAH had to offer with regard to landscapes and work teams and so on, and said:” OK, I’m going to make a film here “, said.

Redford has also used its star status to search for difficult film projects and to quietly defend environmental causes such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Wildlife Federation.

A dedicated climate activist, Redford founded the Redford Center in 2005 with the help of his son James Redford, who aims to use films to motivate climate action. The actor -director also wrote for CNN in 2020 – in the middle of forest fires in California – on the way he thought that the climate crisis was not taken seriously enough.

In 2013, Redford also hid the Keystone XL pipeline in a video intended for the White House, encouraging the former Prime Minister of Alberta, Alison Redford, to criticize anti-pipeline campaigns.

Look | Redford against Redford on Keystone XL:

Redford against Redford on Keystone XL

Robert Redford spoke out against Keystone XL pipeline in a recent video, which prompted Prime Minister Redford to say that celebrities lack credibility.

In 2020, Redford approved the candidate of the time, Joe Biden, and called his republican opponent Donald Trump in the division. He described Trump’s administration as a “type of dictator” in another editorial for NBC in 2019.

Redford won an honorary Oscar or for life in 2001. And in 2016, the president of the time, Barack Obama, gave Redford the presidential medal of freedom for his art and activism.

Tributes are spilled

Tributes to the actor-director dumped on Tuesday.

Meryl Streep, who played alongside Redford Out of Africa In 1985, paid tribute to her friend in a press release at CBC News.

“One of the lions has passed. Rest in peace my charming friend,” she said.

Actress Marlee Matlin has credited Sundance in part for the popularity of CODAThe film in 2021 in which she played. “A genius has passed,” she said on X.

A jeans man and an ordinary jacket is held on a stage on a podium. The public before him applauded
Robert Redford, founder and president of Sundance Institute, applauded during the first opening evening of the film Whiplash during the Sundance Film Festival on January 16, 2014 in Park City, Utah. (Danny Moloshok / Invision / The Associated Press)

Morgan Freeman said in an Instagram post that he and Redford were instant friends after working together on the film Brubaker.

“There are some people you know with whom you are going to click,” wrote Freeman. “Rest peacefully, my friend.”

Jane Fonda said on Tuesday that the news of the death of Redford was extremely emotional. “It struck me hard this morning when I read that Bob had left. I can’t stop crying. He wanted to say a lot for me and was a beautiful person in any way,” said Fonda in a statement to CBC News.




https://i.cbc.ca/1.3430673.1758025975!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_1180/robert-redford-nl.jpg?im=Resize%3D620

About The Author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *