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Actor-turned-director and activist Robert Redford, one of Hollywood's most well-known leading men and an influential supporter of independent film, has died at the age of 89.
His publicist Cindi Berger confirmed the death to CBC News on Tuesday, saying he passed away in his home in Sundance in the mountains of Utah,"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 filmmaking long before small and quirky were fashionable.
"Robert Redford was the golden boy," said Sean P. Means, deputy editor at the Salt Lake Tribune, who formerly served as the paper's film critic for 25 years.
Whether Redford was portraying the wealthiest among us in The Great Gatsby, making hearts race in romantic roles like Out Of Africa, or playing an outlaw in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Means says he had the"stunning good looks that [let him] fit in to society's spaces equally well."
Baseball player, then painter, then actor
Born in the Los Angeles beach city of Santa Monica on Aug. 18, 1936, to what he described as a"lower working class family," Redford landed a college baseball scholarship but lost it after spending too much time partying.
Deciding he wanted to be an artist, Redford moved to Europe, spending time in France and Italy trying to sell his paintings on the street. Moving back to the U.S., he enrolled in drama school to try his hand at theatrical set design. Michael Feeney Callan, Redford's biographer and friend, told CBC News Network that Redford was initially skeptical of a career in front of the camera.
"The idea of being an actor had never been in his game plan," Callan said."By osmosis, celebrity happened to him."
But he was persuaded to take to the stage, and by 1959 he was a full-time performer on Broadway and later found work on television.
Redford made his movie debut in 1962 in a low-budget film called Warhunt, but first won attention in Barefoot in the Park, opposite Jane Fonda.
Redford remained best known for the two early movies he made with Paul Newman: the 1969 western caper Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, both of which became classics.
He never won the best actor Oscar, but Redford's first outing as a director — the 1980 family drama Ordinary People — won for best picture and best director.
From the 1980s he devoted more time to producing films and to the establishment of the Sundance Institute — a year-round workshop for aspiring filmmakers — and the Sundance Festival, which has become one of the most influential independent film showcases in the world.
A representative for the Sundance Institute expressed their sadness at the loss of their "founder and friend."
"Bob's vision of a space and a platform for independent voices launched a movement that, over four decades later, has inspired generations of artists and redefined cinema in the U.S. and around the world," the statement read."Beyond his enormous contributions to culture at large, we will miss his generosity, clarity of purpose, curiosity, rebellious spirit, and his love for the creative process."
Redford remained active in films as an actor and producer right up to the end of his life. In 2017, he reunited with Fonda for the Netflix drama Our Souls at Night, a romance between a widow and widower.
"I live for sex scenes with him," Fonda told journalists when the film premiered in Venice."He's a great kisser so it was fun to kiss him in my 20s and to kiss him again in my almost 80s."
A private life in Utah
While Redford rose to prominence for his role as the Sundance Kid, he never became comfortable with his celebrity status, or the male starlet role that followed him into his 60s.
"People have been so busy relating to how I look, it's a miracle I didn't become a self-conscious blob of protoplasm. It's not easy being Robert Redford," he once told New York magazine.
Biographer Callan said that Redford unveiled himself one layer at a time — which is why documenting his life took 15 years.
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"He said very early on, 'We'll do this in two bits. There will be the celebrity of me, and there'll be the me me," Callan recalled.
"He was very good at compartmentalizing his life."
In the early 1970s, Redford fell in love with the countryside in Utah, after his first wife Lola Van Wagenen introduced him to it. Upon seeing some career success, Redford bought a small plot of land in Utah, built a cabin there himself and retreated to the state to enjoy a level of privacy unknown to most superstars.
"He fell in love with Utah," Means said."It became his refuge... the place he could come to away from Hollywood."
Redford was once quoted saying,"Some people have analysis. I have Utah."
Redford was married to Van Wagenen for more than 25 years before their divorce in 1985. In 2009, he married for a second time, to German artist and longtime partner Sibylle Szaggars.
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Actor, director and activist Robert Redford died Tuesday morning at the age of 89. He was known for spending his time off film sets working on causes close to him, including weighing in on political issues and environmental activism. Redford sat down with the CBC in 2010 to promote his film The Conspirator.
Other causes
According to Means, the Sundance Institute that he founded not only supported young, outsider, independent filmmakers"before it was even called independent film" — but also helped forge Utah's local film industry.
"Quite a few filmmakers... came to Sundance for the film festival, saw what Utah had to offer as far as scenery and work crews and so on, and said, 'OK, I'm gonna make a movie here'," Means said.
Redford also used his star status to seek out challenging film projects and to quietly champion 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, which aims to use films to motivate climate action. The actor-director also wrote for CNN in 2020 — amid wildfires in California — about how he felt the climate crisis wasn't being taken seriously enough.
In 2013, Redford also derided the Keystone XL pipeline in a video aimed at the White House, prompting former Alberta premier Alison Redford to criticize the anti-pipeline campaigns.
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In 2020, Redford endorsed then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and called his Republican opponent Donald Trump divisive. He called Trump's administration"dictator-like" in another op-ed for NBC in 2019.
Redford won an honorary, or lifetime achievement, Oscar in 2001. And in 2016, then-president Barack Obama gave Redford the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his art and activism.
Tributes pour in
Tributes to the actor-director poured out on Tuesday.
Meryl Streep, who starred alongside Redford in Out Of Africa in 1985, paid tribute to her friend in a statement to CBC News.
"One of the lions has passed. Rest in peace my lovely friend," she said.
Actress Marlee Matlin credited Sundance in part for the popularity of CODA, the 2021 movie she starred in."A genius has passed," she said on X.
Morgan Freeman said in an Instagram post that he and Redford were instant friends after they worked together on the film Brubaker.
"There are certain people you know that you're going to click with," Freeman wrote."Rest peacefully, my friend."
