Robert Redford, the charming film star who became an Oscar winner as a director, and who off screen promoted environmental awareness and nurtured the independent film movement centered around the Sundance Festival, died early Tuesday morning at his home in Utah. He was 89.
His death, in the mountains above Provo, was announced in a statement by Cindi Berger, chief executive of the public relations firm Rogers & Cowan PMK. She said he died in his sleep but did not specify a cause.
With disdain for the Hollywood approach to filmmaking that he considered “simplified,” Robert Redford typically demanded that his films carry cultural weight, in many cases making serious subjects such as grief and political corruption resonate with audiences, largely thanks to his enormous power as a Hollywood star.
As an actor, among his most notable roles were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President’s Men (1976), about the journalistic pursuit of President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate era. In Three Days of the Condor (1975), he played an introverted CIA codebreaker caught in a deadly cat-and-mouse game.
The Sting (1973), about Depression-era con men, earned him his first and only Academy Award nomination as an actor.
Redford was one of Hollywood’s most beloved actors for decades, whether in comedies, dramas, or thrillers; studios often marketed him as a sex symbol.
His career as a romantic lead owed much to the prominent actresses who starred alongside him – Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park (1967), Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were (1973), and Meryl Streep in Out of Africa (1985).
He ventured into directing in his 40s, and with his very first film, Ordinary People (1980), won an Academy Award. The film won three more Oscars, including Best Picture.
His next film as a director, The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), a comic drama about a New Mexico farmer whose right to water was denied by indifferent developers, was a failure. But Redford stubbornly refused to turn to less esoteric subjects.
Instead, he directed and produced A River Runs Through It (1992), a drama about Montana fly-fishermen contemplating existential questions, and Quiz Show (1994), about the notorious television scandal of the 1950s. Quiz Show was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
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Source: RTS, Foto: EPA / Claudio Onorati