Robert Redford

By Tom Kirvan

Long one of Hollywood’s leading men, Robert Redford underwent a transformation at the peak of his acting career, becoming an award-winning movie director and activist for environmental causes.

“Speak out for what you believe and what you feel,” Redford surmised. “Or don’t. You have to live with yourself.”

Such declarations were just part of Redford’s charm and appeal, as was his take on life.

“Life is essentially sad,” said Redford, who was born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, Calif. “Happiness is sporadic. It comes in moments, and that’s it. Extract the blood from every moment.”

A talented illustrator since high school, Redford attended the University of Colorado before dropping out, eventually appearing in several bit parts on “The Twilight Zone” and “The Untouchables.”

His movie career took off in the 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” a hit that also starred matinee idol Paul Newman. The pair would return to the silver screen in “The Sting,” a 1973 box office bonanza about Depression-era grifters in which Redford earned his first and only Oscar nomination as an actor. His stardom took on even more luster with his performance in “All the President’s Men,” a 1976 movie about the Watergate investigation spurred by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Robert Redford*

“Sound and accurate journalism defends our democracy,” said Redford. “It’s one of the most effective weapons we have to restrain the power-hungry. I always said that ‘All the President’s Men’ was a violent movie. No shots were fired, but words were used as weapons.”

A few years later, Redford branched into directing, winning an Academy Award for his work on “Ordinary People,” a 1980 movie starring Mary Tyler Moore that delved into the grief experienced by an upper-middle-class family after the death of a son.

In 1981, Redford founded the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to generating fresh cinematic voices. Several years later, he put his muscle behind a film festival in Park City, Utah, which has become a global showcase for American films made outside the sphere of Hollywood. For his efforts to support burgeoning filmmakers, Redford became known as the “godfather” of low-budget independent cinema.

“I wasn’t really seeing the country I lived in being represented onscreen,” Redford indicated. “I wanted to see stories where things weren’t so red, white, and blue, or black and white. I was interested in the grey zone.”

A Hollywood legend who gained even more acclaim as a humanitarian and philanthropist, Redford died in 2025 at the age of 89, to be long remembered for his thoughts on perseverance.

“I grew up in a world that said failure is the end of the road,” he remarked. “It’s not. It’s a step along the road.”

*U.S. Embassy photographer JP Evans, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons