{"id":35043,"date":"2025-09-17T16:27:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T14:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/?p=35043"},"modified":"2025-09-18T18:06:39","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T16:06:39","slug":"robert-redford-the-actor-director-who-was-universally-admired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/robert-redford-the-actor-director-who-was-universally-admired\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Redford: the actor-director who was universally admired"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having passed away at the age of 89, the American film legend, successful actor-director, and early activist for the Democratic Party and environmentalism, is now being honored by everyone. Including Donald Trump. This is quite an achievement in an America that is more divided than ever.<\/p>\n

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Along with Paul Newman, who passed away before him, they were among Hollywood’s male icons.<\/p>\n

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He will be missed not only by his fans, whether they were admirers of his charismatic acting<\/b> or his exceptional beauty, both virile and romantic, but also by the Democratic and environmentalist causes<\/b>\u2014of which he was a fierce defender long before it became a must\u2014by independent cinema<\/b>, for which he created a festival, and finally by… horses, to whose ears he would whisper.<\/p>\n

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Passed away in his sleep<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

Robert Redford left this planet at the age of 89,<\/b> in his sleep, on Tuesday, September 16, at his home in the mountains of Utah.<\/p>\n

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But the giant of American cinema will live on forever, shining through the many masterpieces in which he starred or directed<\/b>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California<\/b>, to a dairy farmer turned accountant father and a stay-at-home mother, he inherited his artistic side from the latter.<\/p>\n

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A rebellious child and teenager<\/b>, he managed to channel his energy into sports and dreamed of becoming a baseball player<\/b>.<\/p>\n

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But he was also searching for something else. An avid reader, jazz lover, and traveler<\/strong> (after college, he spent time in Europe, notably in Florence and then Paris, where he studied fine arts), he finally found his calling in an art<\/strong> form that allowed him to live several lives and fulfill several desires at once: cinema.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Noticed by Broadway and then Hollywood<\/h3>\n

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A graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York<\/strong>, he began his professional theater career in the late 1950s on Broadway<\/strong> before being noticed by Hollywood.<\/p>\n

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Poster for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the film that made Robert Redford a star in 1969 \u00a9<\/span> 20th Century Fox<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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After his first major film role in 1966 in The Chase<\/strong>, his career<\/strong> as an international star took off in 1969 with George Roy Hill’s cult western film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid<\/strong>, in which he starred alongside another future icon of American cinema, Paul Newman.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This was only the beginning of a dazzling career<\/strong>, with 70 roles to his credit<\/strong>, often alongside other Hollywood legends such as Meryl Streep, Mia Farrow, Barbra Streisand, Faye Dunaway, and Dustin Hoffman<\/strong>, and under the direction of the greatest filmmakers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Robert Redford with Barbara Streisand in Sydney Pollack’s film The Way We Were, 1973 \u00a0\u00a9<\/span> TriStar Pictures, Inc. All Rights Reserved<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Among his most memorable films are The Sting<\/strong> (again) by George Roy Hill (1973), The Way We Were<\/strong> (1973) and Three Days of the Condor<\/strong> (1975), both by Sydney Pollack, The Great Gatsby<\/strong> by Jack Clayton (1974), Three Days of the Condor<\/b>, by (once again) Sydney Pollack<\/b> (1975), All the President’s Men<\/b> by Alan J. Pakula (1976), Out of Africa <\/b>by (once again) Sydney Pollack (1985), and more.<\/p>\n

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He starred in his last film, The Old Man and the Gun, directed by David Lowery<\/b>, in 2018, in which he played a gentleman bank robber.<\/p>\n

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Equally successful behind the camera<\/h3>\n

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But Robert Redford also made a successful transition to the other side of the camera<\/strong>, directing 1980’s Ordinary People<\/strong>, which won both the Oscar<\/strong> (and Golden Globe in the same category) for Best Picture and Best Director<\/strong>. Other films, such as A River Runs Through It<\/strong> (1992) and The Horse Whisperer<\/strong> (1998), also made an impression on moviegoers with their sensitivity and their subtle advocacy for nature.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Robert Redford with Dustin Hoffman in Alan J. Pakula’s classic investigative film All the President’s Men, 1976 \u00a9\u00a0<\/span>Warner Bros.\/Sunset Boulevard\/Corbis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Robert Redford has thus managed to maintain his popularity throughout his career<\/b>, whether playing an honest journalist<\/b> in search of the truth, who manages to expose the Watergate scandal and bring about the downfall of Robert Nixon in All the President’s Men, or a likeable con man<\/b> in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or The Sting.<\/p>\n

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His talent also made him popular with his peers<\/strong>, who awarded him several prizes, including an honorary Oscar in 2002 and an honorary C\u00e9sar in 2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After becoming a producer, he founded the Sundance Film Festival<\/strong> in Utah in 1981, where he owns property. The festival has become an international benchmark for independent film<\/strong>, a place where talents such as Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, and Darren Aronofsky have been discovered.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two marriages<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

In his real life, Robert Redford was married twice,<\/b> first<\/strong> to producer Lola Van Wagenen<\/b> from 1958 to 1985, with whom he had four children: Scott Anthony, Shauna, Amy, and James. He suffered the tragedy of losing two of his sons: Scott, who died at five months old from sudden infant death syndrome, and James, who died at the age of 58 from liver cancer.<\/p>\n

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In 2009, the actor married German painter and photographer Sibylle Szaggars<\/strong>, who is also a committed environmentalist.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She was 21 years his junior and lived with him until his last breath.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Final achievement<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

By passing away from a world that is currently more divided than ever, Robert Redford achieved one last feat.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Robert Redford, in front of and behind the camera in The Horse Whisperer, 1998 \u00a9 Wildwood-Touchstone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Despite his well-known commitment to the Democratic Party<\/strong>\u2014in 2016, Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States\u2014he was praised by Donald Trump in an unambiguous tribute<\/strong>. \u201cThere were years when there was no one better,\u201d commented the US president.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For actress Jane Fonda<\/b>, the actor’s comrade-in-arms, whose ideas are light years away from Donald Trump’s, Robert Redford \u201cembodied an America for which we must continue to fight.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Getting Jane Fonda and Donald Trump to agree on something today is rare enough to be worth mentioning…<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read also > Scarlett Johansson, Hollywood’s most bankable actress<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Featured photo: Robert Redford in The Three Days of the Condor \u00a9 Paramount\/Dino de Laurentiis<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having passed away at the age of 89, the American film legend, successful actor-director, and early activist for the Democratic Party and environmentalism, is now being honored by everyone. Including Donald Trump. This is quite an achievement in an America that is more divided than ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":457,"featured_media":35038,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"%%post_title%% %%sep%% %%sitetitle%%","_seopress_titles_desc":"American actor and director Robert Redford, who died at the age of 89, is now unanimously admired in his country, despite his strong Democratic and environmentalist commitments.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"both","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":301,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[670],"tags":[240,798],"class_list":["post-35043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-portrait-en","tag-cinema-en","tag-etats-unis-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}