Robert Redford, Legendary Hollywood Actor, Director and Independent Film Champion, Dies at 89

He remained an articulate champion of environmental causes, speaking out publicly on occasion, as in 2012 when he wrote an opinion piece on Huffington Post demanding an end to public handouts to oil, gas and coal companies. “We should not be subsidizing the destruction of our planet,” he argued. Many of his large land purchases in Utah and New Mexico over the years were in part to protect open space from development. “Other people have analysis; I have Utah,” Redford once quipped.

But Redford’s main public profile centered on his status as a box office movie star, with which he was never entirely comfortable despite appearing as an actor in 83 films. He cringed when he was called a “living legend.”

“When I got into the business, I had this naive idea that I’d let my work speak for me. I just was never interested in talking about myself,” Redford told AARP The Magazine in 2011. “However, we’re in such a different time, and celebrity is so much in the mainstream. I thought, I might as well enter this zone, but go a toe at a time.”

Robert Redford as The Sundance Kid in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." The role launched the handsome young actor into superstardom.

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Redford had worked as an actor for a decade before he got on a horse and galloped into movie immortality in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the 1969 picture that featured him as laconic Harry Longabaugh — the Kid ­— alongside his close friend Paul Newman as Robert LeRoy Parker — Cassidy. The film told the story of two train robbers at the turn of the 20th century trying, comically, to escape a relentless posse (“Who are those guys?”), and their fate when they flee to South America.

As with many Hollywood Westerns, it was only loosely based on fact and viewed a somewhat ugly history through a gauzy lens. But it was a hit, as was Redford. In 2015, he told Entertainment Tonight the Kid was his favorite role — “playing the outlaw.” The movie was nominated for seven Oscars and won four at the 1970 Academy Awards.

(Left to right) Robert Redford and his close friend Paul Newman played lovable con artists in "The Sting." The film won seven Oscars.

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Four years later, Redford teamed up with Newman again for The Sting, which won seven Oscars out of 10 nominations, including a nomination for Redford as best actor. When Newman died at age 83 in 2008, Redford mourned. “There is a point where feelings go beyond words,” he said in a statement. “I have lost a real friend. My life — and this country — is better for his being in it.”

Another of his movies that reflected his passions was All the President’s Men, the 1976 film about how Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward got the story of the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon resigning in disgrace in 1974. In a 2013 interview with AARP, Redford said he was fascinated by journalism.

“What they did was totally heroic,” he said of Woodward (whom he played) and Bernstein (played by Dustin Hoffman). “It was journalism as a path to the truth. You don’t see much of that today. I was so proud and so happy to make a film that celebrates how important journalism is and how it proved itself by hard work. … What these two reporters did was a moment in time. Can that moment ever come back? I don’t think so.” The film won four Oscars.

(Left to right) Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Redford as Bob Woodward in "All the President's Men," the story of two Washington Post reporters whose work broke the Watergate scandal wide open and led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The movie won four Academy Awards.

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Although politically aware and generally progressive, Redford maintained he was no ideologue. “Political activism has been a part of my life and part of the films I try to make,” he said once about the Sundance Film Festival. “But … we don’t take any ideological stance. I’m anti-ideology. Our work tries to transcend politics. Whatever side you’re on, we try to show stories from every part of the country, and so ‘red state, blue state’ doesn't mean a whole lot to us.”

His biggest hits included romances like The Way We Were (1973), with Barbra Streisand, and Out of Africa (1985), with Meryl Streep. According to IMDb, his last live-action role in a film was in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame; his last lead role, the previous year, was as a charming bank robber in the comic heist movie The Old Man & the Gun. He is listed as an executive producer and cast member for Mustangs: America’s Wild Horses, a feature documentary that includes the horse-loving wife and daughter of Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa Springsteen and Jessica Springsteen, as executive producers. And he is listed as an executive producer on a 2023 film, All Illusions Must Be Broken and the TV show Dark Winds, on which he did a cameo role in 2025.

But there’s one film he never got to make. He told AARP in 2011, "When you get older, you learn certain life lessons. You apply that wisdom, and suddenly you say, 'Hey, I've got a new lease on this thing. So let's go.' The other movie I want to make is about people who rediscover themselves in older love. They got together out of passion years earlier, but it flamed out and they went their separate ways. They get to be older and somehow come back into each other's lives and regain their relationship with a more mature love. That's an interesting story — and I'm qualified to write it!"

Hollywood figures took to social media after Redford's death to memorialize him.

"#RIP & thank you RobertRedford, a tremendously influential cultural figure for the creative choices made as an actor/producer/director & for launching the Sundance Film Festival which supercharged America’s Independent Film movement," director Ron Howard posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. "Artistic Gamechanger."

"I always admired Robert Redford, not only for his legendary career as an actor and director but for what came next," former secretary of State Hillary Clinton posted on Instagram. "He championed progressive values like protecting the environment and access to the arts while creating opportunities for new generations of activists and filmmakers. A true American icon."

"Robert Redford. Your art stands the test of time," actor Rita Wilson shared on Instagram. "Your love of young filmmakers and artists gave us Sundance Film Festival. You showed us the importance of nature. As a director we were able to see your art from behind the camera. You will be remembered always. And you will be missed. May your memory be eternal."

"Our film, CODA, came to the attention of everyone because of Sundance. And Sundance happened because of Robert Redford," actor Marlee Matlin posted on X. "A genius has passed. RIP Robert."

“With love and admiration," actor Colman Domingo, one of AARP's Movies for Grownups' Hottest Actors Over 50, shared on X. "Thank you Mr. Redford for your everlasting impact. Will be felt for generations. R.I.P.”

Redford is survived by his second wife, German-born painter Sibylle Szaggars, whom he met at Sundance in the 1990s and married in 2009. Redford considered becoming an artist in his youth and continued painting during his movie career.

He is also survived by two children with his first wife, historian and consumer activist Lola Van Wagenen, whom he married in 1958 and divorced in 1985 (their first child, Scott, died in 1959 of sudden infant death syndrome; son Jamie died in 2020); and by seven grandchildren.