Robert Redford, Hollywood’s golden boy with a Midas touch

A photo taken on September 1, 2017 shows US actors Jane Fonda and Robert Redford attending the premier of the movie “Our Souls at Night” during the 74th Venice Film Festival at Venice Lido (Photo by Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP)

With his all-American good looks, Robert Redford, who died on Tuesday aged 89 was the eternal “Sundance Kid”, a US screen legend both in front of and behind the camera.

The tousled-haired heartthrob made his breakthrough alongside Paul Newman as the affable outlaw in the Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” in 1969.

Afer 20 years as one of Hollywood’s hottest actors, he moved behind the camera becoming an Oscar-winning director and co-founded the Sundance Film Festival, which became a springboard for a new generation of independent filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino.

“Few careers have had such an impact on the history of cinema,” said French producer Alain Terzian before awarding him the French equivalent of an Oscar in 2019.

- Outlaw -

But the athletic young Redford’s beginnings were far from a smooth ascent to the top. The son of an accountant from Santa Monica, California, his mother died in 1955, a year afer he finished high school.

He won a scholarship to the University of Colorado thanks to his baseball skills, but lost it a year later because of his heavy drinking.

Redford spent the next months travelling around Europe before enrolling in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1959.

Afer various television roles, his first big screen break was in the romantic comedy “Barefoot In The Park” (1967) opposite Jane Fonda.

Two years later his career went stellar with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” about two outlaw buddies who flee to Bolivia to escape US authorities.

The film became an instant classic, launching Redford and burnishing the career of the older Newman, who became a lifelong friend.

The pair also teamed up as 1930s con artists in “The Sting” (1973), which won Redford his only nomination for an Oscar for best actor.

- Behind the camera -

Now a household name, he starred in a succession of major films such as “The Great  Gatsby” (1974), “Three Days of the Condor” (1975) and the critically acclaimed “All the President’s Men” (1976), playing Bob Woodward, one of the Washington Post journalists who broke the Watergate scandal.

In another career high, he won an Oscar for his directorial debut with “Ordinary People” in 1980.

The baseball classic “The Natural” followed in 1984 before Redford had another generation of women swooning in the epic romance “Out of Africa” (1985), in which he starred alongside Meryl Streep.

He went on to star with a young Brad Pitt in “A River Runs Through It” (1992) and the Oscar-nominated “Quiz Show” (1994).

“At one time I thought when I was making films... that might have an effect on the country or the future,” he told AFP in 2007. “I don’t think so anymore.”

“If you look at ‘All The President’s Men’ and what it was saying about the relationship between the media and government and the corporate powers, and then look where we are now, it’s worse than it was,” he added.

“Robert Redford’s work... always represents the man himself: the intellectual, the artist, the cowboy,” said singer Barbra Streisand as she presented the avowed liberal and environmentalist with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2002.

The actress, who played his lover in “The Way We Were” (1973), said: “He’s always interesting,  he’s always interested. He’s very smart, very private, he’s self-assured, but shy.”

- Indie guru -

Redford always saw his part in launching the independent Sundance Film Festival in 1985 as one of his greatest achievements.

Created to help aspiring filmmakers disaffected with Hollywood’s commercialism and lack of diversity, it has fostered leading independent directors such as Jim Jarmusch, Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh. In 2013 Redford said that by pursuing the indie path, he had ensured his own survival in the movie business.

“Had I given in to living in the (Hollywood) system, I don’t know that I would be here right now.” 

- #Metoo -

Aged 76, he was back on screen for one of his meatiest starring roles in years, a solo performance as a lost-at-sea yachtsman in “All Is Lost” (2013).

He also had a role in Marvel Studios’ superhero blockbuster “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (2014) and a cameo in its record-shattering “Avengers: Endgame” (2019). In 2018 Redford said that the greatest change in Hollywood over his 60-year career had been the #MeToo movement, a “tipping point” he said would change the industry’s attitudes towards women and sexual misconduct.  

Redford had four children with his first wife, Lola Van Wagenen, one of whom died as an infant. 

He married German artist and longtime girlfriend Sibylle Szaggars in 2009. (AFP)

Robert Redford in five films

US screen legend Robert Redford -- who died Tuesday aged 89 -- was one of the most 

successful stars of his generation as well as an Oscar-winning director.

Here are some of his most famous films:

- ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ (1969) - 

Based on a true story, the love triangle romance at its core took place to the tune of Burt Bacharach’s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”.

The film was also the beginning of a close friendship between Redford and Newman.

- ‘The Sting’ (1973) -

Redford and Newman teamed up again as con artists in George Roy Hill’s “The Sting” (1973), 

which won Redford his only nomination for an Oscar for best actor.

Set in 1936 in Chicago, with a ragtime score, it tells the story of two grifers who carry out the ultimate con of a crime boss called Doyle Lonnegan, played by Robert Shaw.

The film, which won seven Oscars, is constructed like a play, with elaborate props, intrigue and music. The audience, which believes it is in on the conmen’s secret, ends up being duped too.

- ‘All the President’s Men’ (1976) -

A classic American political thriller, Alan Pakula’s “All the President’s Men” tells the story of the probe by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein into the Watergate scandal that toppled President Richard Nixon. Redford, who plays Woodward (Dustin Hofman was Bernstein), was the driving force behind the film, which won four Oscars and which minutely detailed the journalists’ work  investigating one of the biggest scandals in US political history.

“Forty-five years after Watergate, the truth is again in danger,” Redford said in the Washington Post in April 2017, comparing President Donald Trump’s hatred of journalists to that of the Nixon administration.

- ‘Out of Africa’ (1985) -

Epic romance “Out of Africa” consecrated the Redford legend. He plays an indomitable big game hunter and aviator, with whom Meryl Streep falls in love against the jaw-dropping backdrop of the Kenyan savannah.

Redford was the archetype of the perfect if somewhat elusive lover, swooping down in his biplane to whisk writer Karen Blixen of for a romantic flight over the Maasai Mara game park or a picnic in the bush before disappearing for weeks on end.

Nominated for 11 Oscars, the adaptation of Blixen’s autobiography won seven Oscars and three Golden Globes. It is the sixth out of seven films Redford made with director Sydney Pollack. 

- ‘The Horse Whisperer’ (1998) -

Redford hit box office gold with Nicholas Evans’s story about a man with an extraordinary way with horses, which he both starred in and directed. The classy tearjerker set in the remote mountains of Montana about bringing a badly injured teenager and her horse back from a very dark place, was also one of Scarlett Johansson’s breakthrough performances.

AFP