Oscar-Successful Actor and Director Was 89

Robert Redford, the longtime Hollywood icon and star of traditional movies corresponding to 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child and 1985’s Out of Africa, has died. He was 89.

“Robert Redford handed away on Sept. 16, 2025, at his dwelling at Sundance within the mountains of Utah — the place he liked, surrounded by these he liked,” Cindi Berger, chairman and CEO of Rogers & Cowan PMK, tells ipromiseyoumedia in an announcement. “He might be missed drastically. The household requests privateness.”

Based on theThe New York Occasions, who was the primary to report the actor’s loss of life, Redford died at his dwelling outdoors Provo on Tuesday morning. No reason behind loss of life was given, however Berger instructed the outlet in an announcement that he died in his sleep.

A number one Hollywood heartthrob at his peak within the Seventies, Redford had expertise to again up his beauty. His decades-long profession earned him a Finest Actor Academy Award nomination for 1973’s The Sting, the Finest Director award for 1980’s Abnormal Individuals and one other Finest Director nomination for 1994’s Quiz Present.

“I’ve spent most of my life simply targeted on the street forward, not wanting again,” Redford mentioned within the acceptance speech for his 2002 honorary Oscar. “However now tonight, I am seeing within the rearview mirror that there’s something I’ve not thought of a lot, known as historical past.”

Born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on Aug. 18, 1936 in Santa Monica, California, Redford was a scholar on the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his Broadway debut in 1959’s Tall Story, adopted by a lead in 1963’s Barefoot within the Park — a job he reprised within the 1967 movie adaptation alongside Jane Fonda.

His onscreen profession started within the early Sixties with roles on TV reveals like Tate, Route 66, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone and The Untouchables. And naturally, he reached new heights in 1969 when he landed the position of outlaw the Sundance Child in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child alongside the late Paul Newman.

“I used to be being put up for Butch Cassidy as a result of I’d achieved the comedy. However that half did not curiosity me,” Redford instructed Collider in 2019. “What me was the Sundance Child as a result of I might relate to that primarily based alone expertise and significantly my very own childhood and feeling like an outlaw most of my life.”

He added, “So I instructed [director] George [Roy Hill], and he knew Paul very well and knew he was rather more like Butch Cassidy, so George turned it throughout. He went to Paul and so they argued a bit till Paul lastly realized that George was proper. He was well-known and I wasn’t, which is why they switched the title, too.”

Extra of Redford’s memorable movies embrace The Approach We Have been (1973), The Nice Gatsby (1974), All of the President’s Males (1976), The Pure (1984), Indecent Proposal (1993), The Horse Whisperer (1998) and All Is Misplaced (2013).

Along with Abnormal Individuals, he directed A River Runs Via It (1992), Quiz Present, The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Lions for Lambs (2007) and several other different movies.

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In August 2018, Redford instructed Leisure Weekly that he could be retiring after making The Previous Man & the Gun, in which he starred alongside Casey Affleck, Sissy Spacek, Danny Glover, Tika Sumpter and Tom Waits.

“By no means say by no means, however I fairly nicely concluded that this may be it for me by way of appearing, and [I’ll] transfer in the direction of retirement after this ‘trigger I have been doing it since I used to be 21,” he mentioned on the time.

A month later, on the premiere of the movie, he instructed ipromiseyoumedia he regretted saying he was retiring and emphasised he was undecided what the longer term held.

As Redford defined, “I believe it was a mistake to say that I used to be retiring since you by no means know. It did really feel prefer it was time, possibly, to focus on one other class.”

This previous March, Redford returned to the display screen for the primary time in six years with a cameo on the thriller sequence Darkish Winds. It could mark his last display screen position.

Main as much as that cameo, Redford had lent his voice to 2020’s Omniboat: A Quick Boat Fantasia, in addition to his spouse Sibylle Szaggars Redford’s 2024 performance-art piece “The Approach of the Rain — Hope for Earth.”

Whereas he collected many accolades for his work onscreen and behind the digital camera (together with the Golden Globes’ prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Display Actors Guild Life Achievement Award), Redford skilled tragedy in his private life. In 2020, his son James Redford died from bile-duct most cancers in his liver on the age of 58.

“The grief is immeasurable with the loss of a kid,” Redford’s rep mentioned in an announcement on the time. “Jamie was a loving son, husband and father. His legacy lives on by his kids, artwork, filmmaking and devoted ardour to conservation and the atmosphere.”

Redford and ex-wife Lola Van Wagenen had 4 kids collectively: Scott (who died simply two months after his delivery in 1959 from sudden toddler loss of life syndrome), Shauna, James and Amy. Redford additionally misplaced his mom after a troublesome being pregnant, when Redford was a teen.

Redford married Sibylle in 2009. In a canopy story for AARP The Journal a couple of years later, he mentioned his spouse, who was 20 years his junior, was a “very particular individual” and gave him a “complete new life.”

The 2 first met in 1996 at his Sundance Mountain Resort, although Sibylle, who’s a multimedia artist, admitted in a while that she knew little or no in regards to the actor.

“It was an exquisite starting of a relationship, as a result of it started as two human beings assembly one another and discovering a connection as two human beings, fairly than being coloured by success,” Redford as soon as mentioned.

Along with James, Redford co-founded The Redford Middle in 2005, a nonprofit specializing in producing movies and offering grants to filmmakers who direct movies that contact on local weather change and the atmosphere, a trigger the actor cared deeply about.

In 2015, Redford was amongst a bunch of celebrities who gathered in Paris to assist encourage the United Nations to strengthen their stance on world warming. The convention introduced collectively 195 nations and lasted almost 11 days. Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn have been additionally amongst those that made a private pleas to scale back fossil-fuel emissions.

“This must be the time as a result of we’re operating out of time. It has been so a few years however there is no extra time,” Redford mentioned on the time.

In 1975, Redford cemented his repute as an environmental activist after he appeared on 60 Minutes and invited Dan Moderately (whom Redford later portrayed in 2015’s Fact) to go to the positioning of a proposed power-plant development he opposed. The nationally televised report compelled the plant’s cancellation.

Redford was additionally captivated with supporting filmmakers and artists, and based the Sundance Institute earlier than launching the Sundance Movie Pageant in 1984.

In his 2002 honorary-Oscar acceptance speech, he mentioned that his private work is “most vital to me,” together with “attempting to place one thing again into an trade that is been good to me. And, after all, Sundance is a manifestation of that.”

Additionally within the speech, Redford mentioned it was “vital” to “be sure that the liberty of creative expression is nurtured and saved alive, as a result of I consider that in retaining variety alive it is going to assist preserve our trade alive.”

“To have the ability to be a part of a freedom of expression that permits us as artists to inform our tales in our personal means in regards to the human situation, the complexities of life, the world round us, is a present and never one to be taken frivolously,” he added. “And I believe the glory of artwork is that it cannot solely survive change, it might lead it. As an artist, I simply can’t consider a greater life than the one which I have been blessed with.”

Redford is survived by his spouse, daughters Shauna and Amy and grandchildren.