Robert Redford, the actor, Oscar-winning director, and environmentalist who forever changed the independent filmmaking scene with his Sundance Film Festival, has died at the age of 89. The Hollywood icon, who was born on August 18, 1936, died in his home on Tuesday morning, “at Sundance in the mountains of Utah—the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” his publicist said in a statement.
Born Charles Robert Redford Jr., the actor appeared in over 50 films, beginning with a small role in 1960’s Tall Story—a film adaptation of the play that had served as his Broadway debut the year before. The romantic comedy starred Jane Fonda, also in her film debut. Fonda and Redford would go on to appear in four more movies together throughout their careers. “It hit me hard this morning when I read that Bob was gone,” Fonda wrote in a statement. “He meant a lot to me and was a beautiful person in every way. He stood for an America we have to keep fighting for.”
Redford resided in Utah. In 1958, he married Utah native Lola Van Wagenen. The pair welcomed four children before divorcing in 1985, the same year he starred alongside Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. The actor remarried German artist Sibylle Szaggars in 2009. He is survived by Szaggers, his daughters Shauna Schlosser Redford and Amy Redford, and seven grandchildren.
The California native’s breakthrough film role came in 1969, when he was cast alongside Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—though Redford’s good looks almost cost him the role. “He’s just another Hollywood blond. Throw a stick out of a window in Malibu, you’ll hit six like him,” a studio executive reportedly said. But Newman insisted that Redford be cast as the Kid to his Butch, forming the foundation of a friendship that continued until Newman’s death in 2008. “We’d play tricks on each other,” Redford said of their dynamic. “The more sophisticated the joke the better.” The pair appeared on screen together again in The Sting in 1973, for which Redford received the only Oscar nomination of his acting career; he would later win an Oscar as a first-time director in 1980 for Ordinary People, as well as an honorary Oscar in 2002.
Starting in 1961, Redford began assembling the land that would become the Sundance Mountain Resort, where the Sundance Institute was formed in 1981, and the organization’s Sundance Film Festival—which bolstered the careers of Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky, Ryan Coogler, and Ava Duvernay—was born. As he stacked his resume with roles, Redford continued to expand his property. By the time he sold the resort in 2020, it spanned 2,800 sprawling acres.
The A River Runs Through It director was known as an avid advocate for the environment, and served as a trustee of the National Resources Defense Council non-profit for 30 years. In the 1970s, he was elected commissioner of the Provo Canyon sewer district in his beloved Utah. But according to the New York Times, the bureaucracy involved with that experience caused the actor to become disillusioned with politics; switching gears, he opted to use independent activism and filmmaking to effect change. Among those efforts is the Redford Center, a nonprofit focused on producing environmental films. “I was born with a hard eye,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. “The way I saw things, I would see what was wrong. I could see what could be better. I developed kind of a dark view of life, looking at my own country. When I was a kid, I was told to be a good sport. It wasn’t whether you won or lost; it was how you played the game. I realized that was a lie.” In 2016, Redford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his “lifelong advocacy on behalf of preserving our environment” and “his pioneering support for independent filmmakers across America.”