Actor-turned-director and activist Robert Redford, one of Hollywood’s most well-known leading men and an influential supporter of independent film, has died at the age of 89.<\/p>\n
His publicist Cindi Berger confirmed the death to CBC News on Tuesday, saying he passed away in his home in Sundance in the mountains of Utah, “the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved.”<\/p>\n
Redford used the millions he made to launch the Sundance\u00a0Institute and Festival in the 1970s, promoting independent filmmaking long before small and quirky were fashionable.<\/p>\n
“Robert Redford was the golden boy,” said Sean P. Means,\u00a0deputy editor at the Salt Lake Tribune, who formerly served as the paper’s film critic for 25 years.<\/p>\n
Whether Redford was portraying the wealthiest among us in The Great Gatsby<\/em>, making hearts race in romantic roles like\u00a0Out Of Africa<\/em>, or playing an outlaw in Butch Cassidy\u00a0and the Sundance Kid<\/em>, Means says he had the “stunning good looks that [let him]\u00a0fit in to society’s spaces equally well.”<\/p>\n Born in the Los Angeles beach city of Santa Monica on Aug. 18, 1936, to what he described as a “lower working class family,” Redford landed a college baseball scholarship but lost it after spending too much time partying.<\/p>\n Deciding he wanted to be an artist, Redford\u00a0moved to Europe, spending time in France and Italy trying to sell his paintings on the street. Moving back to the U.S., he enrolled in drama school to try his hand at theatrical set design. Michael Feeney Callan, Redford’s biographer and friend, told CBC News Network that\u00a0Redford was initially skeptical of a career in front of the camera.<\/p>\n “The idea of being an actor had never been in his game plan,” Callan said. “By osmosis, celebrity happened to him.”<\/p>\n But he was persuaded to take to the stage, and by 1959 he was a full-time performer on Broadway and later found work on television.<\/p>\n Redford made his movie debut in 1962 in a low-budget film called Warhunt<\/em>, but first won attention in Barefoot in the Park<\/em>, opposite Jane Fonda.<\/p>\n Redford remained best known for the two early movies he made with Paul Newman:\u00a0the 1969 western caper Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid<\/em>\u00a0and The Sting<\/em>, both of which became classics.<\/p>\n He never won the best actor Oscar, but Redford’s first outing as a director \u2014\u00a0the 1980 family drama Ordinary People<\/em> \u2014 won for best picture and best director.<\/p>\n From the 1980s he devoted more time to producing films and to the establishment of the Sundance Institute \u2014 a year-round workshop for aspiring filmmakers \u2014\u00a0and the Sundance Festival, which has become one of the most influential independent film showcases in the world.<\/p>\n As It Happens<\/span>7:00<\/span>Director of Robert Redford’s All Is Lost film remembers Hollywood icon: ‘He was all in’<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Tributes are pouring in for the legendary Hollywood actor Robert Redford, who died\u00a0Sept. 16\u00a0at the\u00a0age of 89.\u00a0J.C. Chandor who directed\u00a0All Is Lost,\u00a0one of the last great films Redford starred in, spoke to\u00a0As It Happens\u00a0host Nil K\u00f6ksal about what it was like to work with him.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n A representative for the Sundance Institute expressed their sadness at the loss of their “founder and friend.”<\/p>\n “Bob’s vision of a space and a platform for independent voices launched a movement that, over four decades later,\u00a0has inspired generations of artists and redefined cinema in the U.S. and around the world,” the statement read. “Beyond his enormous contributions to culture at large, we will miss his generosity, clarity of purpose, curiosity, rebellious spirit, and his love for the creative process.”<\/p>\n Redford remained active in films as an actor and producer right up to the end of his life. In 2017, he reunited with Fonda for the Netflix drama Our Souls at Night<\/em>, a romance between a widow and widower.<\/p>\n “I live for sex scenes with him,” Fonda told journalists when the film premiered in Venice. “He’s a great kisser so it was fun to kiss him in my 20s and to kiss him again in my almost 80s.”<\/p>\n While Redford rose to prominence for his role as the Sundance Kid, he never became comfortable\u00a0with his celebrity status, or the male starlet role that followed him into his 60s.<\/p>\n “People have been so busy relating to how I look, it’s a miracle I didn’t become a self-conscious blob of protoplasm. It’s not easy being Robert Redford,” he once told New York magazine.<\/p>\n Biographer Callan\u00a0said\u00a0that\u00a0Redford unveiled himself one layer at a time \u2014 which is why documenting his life took 15 years.<\/p>\n Robert Redford\u2019s biographer on the famed actor\u2019s work, drive \u2014 and effortless charisma<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Hear Robert Redford’s biographer Michael Feeney Callan talk to CBC’s Heather Hiscox about the actor’s art \u2014 and the legacy of a man who was always on the move and ‘poetic by nature.’<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n “He said very early on, ‘We’ll do this in two bits. There will be the celebrity of me, and there’ll\u00a0be the me<\/em>\u00a0me,”\u00a0Callan recalled.<\/p>\n “He was very good at compartmentalizing his life.”<\/p>\n In the early 1970s, Redford fell in love with the countryside in Utah, after his first wife Lola Van Wagenen introduced him to it.\u00a0Upon\u00a0seeing some career success, Redford bought a small plot of land in Utah, built a cabin there himself and retreated to the state to\u00a0enjoy\u00a0a level of privacy unknown to most superstars.<\/p>\n “He fell in love with Utah,” Means said. “It became his refuge …\u00a0the place he could come to away from Hollywood.”<\/p>\n Redford was once quoted saying, “Some people have analysis. I have Utah.”<\/p>\n Redford\u00a0was married to Van Wagenen for more than 25 years before their divorce in 1985. In 2009, he married for a second time, to German artist and longtime partner Sibylle Szaggars.<\/p>\n Throwback: What American patriotism looked like to Robert Redford<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Actor, director and activist Robert Redford died Tuesday morning at the age of 89. He was known for spending his time off film sets working on causes close to him, including weighing in on political issues and environmental activism. Redford sat down with the CBC in 2010 to promote his film The Conspirator.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n According to Means, the Sundance\u00a0Institute that he founded not only supported young, outsider, independent filmmakers “before it was even called independent film”\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 <\/em>but also helped forge Utah’s local film industry.<\/p>\n “Quite a few filmmakers … came to Sundance for the film festival, saw what Utah had to offer as far as scenery and work crews and so on, and said, ‘OK, I’m gonna make a movie here’,” Means said.<\/p>\n Redford also used his star status to seek out challenging film projects and to quietly champion environmental causes such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Wildlife Federation.<\/p>\n A dedicated climate activist, Redford founded the Redford Center in 2005 with the help of his son\u00a0James Redford, which aims to use films to motivate climate action. The actor-director also wrote for celebrity.land<\/a> in 2020 \u2014 amid wildfires in California \u2014 about how he felt the climate crisis wasn’t being taken seriously enough.<\/p>\n In 2013, Redford also derided the Keystone XL pipeline in a video aimed at the White House, prompting former Alberta premier Alison Redford to criticize\u00a0the anti-pipeline campaigns.<\/p>\n Redford vs. Redford over Keystone XL<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Robert Redford spoke out against the Keystone XL pipeline in a recent video, prompting Premier Redford to say celebrities lack credibility.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n In 2020, Redford\u00a0endorsed then-presidential candidate Joe Biden<\/a>\u00a0and called his Republican opponent Donald Trump divisive. He called Trump’s administration “dictator-like<\/a>” in another op-ed for NBC in 2019.<\/p>\n Redford won an honorary, or lifetime achievement, Oscar in 2001. And in\u00a02016, then-president Barack Obama gave Redford the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his art and activism.<\/p>\n Tributes to the actor-director poured out\u00a0on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meryl Streep, who starred alongside Redford in Out Of Africa<\/em> in 1985, paid tribute to her friend in a statement to CBC\u00a0News.<\/p>\n “One of the lions has passed. Rest in peace my lovely friend,” she said.<\/p>\n Actress Marlee Matlin\u00a0credited Sundance\u00a0in part for the popularity of CODA<\/em>, the 2021\u00a0movie she starred in. “A genius has passed,” she said on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n Morgan Freeman said in an Instagram post that he and Redford were instant friends after they worked together on the film Brubaker.<\/p>\n “There are certain people you know that you’re going to click with,” Freeman wrote<\/a>. “Rest peacefully, my friend.”<\/p>\n Jane Fonda said Tuesday the news of Redford’s passing was extremely emotional. “It hit me hard this morning when I read that Bob was gone. I can’t stop crying. He meant a lot to me and was a beautiful person in every way,” Fonda said in a statement to CBC News.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nBaseball player, then painter, then actor<\/h2>\n
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<\/picture><\/div>A private life in Utah<\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\nOther causes<\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\nTributes pour in<\/h2>\n
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