Undying charm, passion for politics, humanity, and the environment, and his support of independent cinema with the Sundance Festival he co-founded with his friend Sidney Pollack. The film world is in mourning. Robert Redford , two-time Oscar winner, died in his sleep at the age of 89 at his home in Provo, Utah.
Of English, Scottish, Irish, and Cornish descent, Redford was born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California, to Marta W. Hart, a housewife, and Charles Robert, a milkman of Irish descent. His mother died when he was just 41, and he abandoned his studies and left for Italy and France, to pursue a life as an artist.
With Irish red hair and a wrinkled face from a very young age, Redford was perfect in every role (except perhaps the villainous ones). In 1958, after a few roles in TV series (The Untouchables, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone), he made his big screen debut with The Hunt, which also starred Sydney Pollack, who later, as director, made him his favorite actor. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best New Actor in 1966 for his role as the bisexual producer married to Natalie Wood in the film The Strange World of Daisy Clover. Then came the western The Hunt, directed by Arthur Penn, with Jane Fonda and Marlon Brando, and in 1969, he appeared with Paul Newman in another cult western directed by George Roy Hill as Butch Cassidy. Hill and the same couple then worked on another cult film in 1973, The Sting (7 Oscars).
For many, Redford is the romantic Hubbell with his tormented love for Katie Molosky (Barbara Streisand), a communist militant completely different from him in Pollack's The Way We Were, or Jack Clayton's 1974 film The Great Gatsby, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel of the same name, in which he plays the romantic Jay. With Pollack, he also starred in the western The Red Crow and the spy story Three Days of the Condor.
With another cult actor like Dustin Hoffman he plays in All the President's Men, in the role of Bob Woodward, one of the two political reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's impeachment.
He made his successful directorial debut in 1980 with Ordinary People, which won him the Oscar for Best Director. The following year, he took over the Sundance Film Festival and turned it into the world's leading showcase for American indie cinema: numerous independent directors, including Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Jim Jarmusch, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, and James Wan, emerged from it.
Pollack directed him again in Out of Africa, starring Meryl Streep, based on Karen Blixen's autobiographical novel of the same name. Still directing, he directed Milagro (1988) and the Brad Pitt melodrama A River Runs Through It. He also directed Quiz Show and The Horse Whisperer, based on Nicholas Evans's best-selling novel. In 2007, he directed Meryl Streep again in Lions for Lambs, and two years later, he produced The Motorcycle Diaries.
In 2002, he won an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2017, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. His last appearance on the big screen was in Avengers: Endgame (2019), in a cameo. But he had already said goodbye to acting the year before, with David Lowery's The Old Man & The Gun.
(Unioneonline)
