The Oscar-winning actor and director, who starred in more than 70 films, has died at the age of 89.

Hollywood mourns Robert Redford: A genius has died

Life, sometimes, is a carom of contradictions. That of Robert Redford, who died yesterday in Utah at the age of 89, was that of a movie star who always dreamed of being a painter, that of a classic heartthrob in the wild whirlwind of New Hollywood, that of a man who seduced half the world but in reality only longed to disappear, to hide from the spotlight in a place between Mijas and Fuenjirola that he discovered when he visited Spain for the first time at the age of 19, on a backpacking trip.

That was the actor, also a director, a box office magnet and driving force behind the Sundance Film Festival, one of the most important on the independent circuit, which he financed out of his own pocket and which he named as a tribute to his character in 'Two and a Half Men'. A guy capable of challenging the jump from a screenwriter to director - as he did with David S. Ward before George R. Hill took the helm of 'The Sting' - and also one who only came out of retirement to make a cameo in a superhero film, in 'Avengers: Endgame', after saying goodbye a year earlier, in 2018, with 'The Old Man and the Gun'. I saw his schizophrenic side: he wanted a life as an actor, but at the same time he suffered from it. 'It's the same thing I felt,' Jane Fonda, with whom he coincided in several films, once said. 'Robert Redford was like that, he walked between light and shadow, between frenetic activity and rest.' It was always coming and going. Until now.

Paul Newman, his best ally

But Redford's life, perhaps, would have been different if the actor had agreed to play Michael Corleone in 'The Godfather' or seduced Mrs. Robinson in 'The Graduate'. Also, surely, if Jack Nicholson hadn't turned down the role of Johnny Hooker, the noble swindler who introduced him to Paul Newman in 'The Sting' and which gave the actor his only Oscar nomination for acting in his entire career. The star with the bluest eyes in cinema was his best riding companion; their friendship, their chemistry, their camaraderie seemed everlasting, although in reality they had only coincided in one other film, also directed by Hill, 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'.

Gallery.

Robert Redford wanted to be many things in his life, and many of them became him thanks to cinema. Hero, thief, scoundrel, bandit, gambler, villain, conqueror. Above all that. I wasn't prepared to enter the film industry and, suddenly, be judged by my physique, he confessed in his memoirs. And yet, he swept off his feet a good handful of actresses over his more than six-decade career. Barbra Streisand in 'The Way We Were,' Jane Fonda in 'Barefoot in the Park,' Mia Farrow in 'The Great Gatsby,' Debra Winger in 'Dangerously Together,' Meryl Streep in 'Out of Africa.' We see a lot of people fucking in movies, but not a scene [when he washes her hair] with that love and that delicacy. By the time we got to the fifth take, I was already in love (...) It was tender and sensual."I wished it wouldn't end, even though I was surrounded by hippos," admitted the actress, with whom she worked again in 'Lions for Lambs'.

'All the President's Men,' 'The Horse Whisperer,' 'Three Days of the Condor,' 'All Is Lost,' 'The Adventures of Jeremiah Johnson'... There's no unknown title in his filmography, which is extensive and varied, and not lacking in awards. Nominated five times for an Oscar, he finally won the statuette for his directorial debut, 'Ordinary People,' in 1980. In 2002, the Academy awarded him another honorary Oscar for his lifetime achievement.

His life has always pivoted between two extremes: that of the young rebel and the exemplary man. He has made a career on both the East and West Coasts. And, with that good-boy air, he has triumphed when the incorrigible New Hollywood stars were emerging in classic films like"The Sting," the only one, as he admitted several times, that he was able to watch after the"cut!"."I never look back, I never have. I don't want to be just history," he asserted. And yet, he ended up being just that.