Robert Redford

Redford's career, like that of many major stars who emerged in the 1950s, began in New York City, where the actor found work both on stage and in television. His Broadway debut was in a small role in Tall Story (1959), followed by parts in The Highest Tree (1959) and Sunday in New York (1961). His biggest Broadway success was as the stuffy newlywed husband of Elizabeth Ashley in the original 1963 cast of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park.[16]

Starting in 1960, Redford appeared as a guest star on numerous television drama programs, including Naked City, Maverick, The Untouchables, The Americans, Whispering Smith, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Route 66, Dr. Kildare, Playhouse 90, Tate, The Twilight Zone, The Virginian, and Captain Brassbound's Conversion, among others.[17][18]

In 1960, Redford was cast as Danny Tilford, a mentally disturbed young man trapped in the wreckage of his family garage, in "Breakdown", one of the last episodes of the syndicated adventure series, Rescue 8, starring Jim Davis and Lang Jeffries.[19]

Redford earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (ABC, 1962). One of his last television appearances until 2019 was on October 7, 1963, on Breaking Point, an ABC medical drama about psychiatry.[20]

Redford in Barefoot in the Park (1967)

Redford made his screen debut in Tall Story (1960) in a minor role. The film's stars were Anthony Perkins, Jane Fonda (her debut), and Ray Walston. After his Broadway success, he was cast in larger feature roles in movies. In 1962 Redford got his second film role in War Hunt, and was soon after casting alongside screen legend Alec Guinness in the war comedy Situation Hopeless ... But Not Serious, in which he played an American soldier falsely imprisoned by a German civilian even after the war has ended. In Inside Daisy Clover (1965), which won him a Golden Globe for best new star, he played a bisexual movie star who marries starlet Natalie Wood, and rejoined her along with Charles Bronson for Sydney Pollack's This Property Is Condemned (1966) — again, as her lover, though this time in a film which achieved even greater success. The same year saw his first teaming (on equal footing) with Jane Fonda, in Arthur Penn's The Chase. This film marked the only time Redford would star with Marlon Brando. Fonda and Redford were paired again in the popular big-screen version of Barefoot in the Park (1967)[4] and were again co-stars many years later in Pollack's The Electric Horseman (1979), followed 38 years later with a Netflix feature, Our Souls at Night.

After this initial success, Redford became concerned about his blond male stereotype image[21] and turned down roles in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate.[22] Redford found the niche he was looking for in George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), scripted by William Goldman, in which he was paired for the first time with Paul Newman. The film was a huge success and made him a major bankable star,[4] cementing his screen image as an intelligent, reliable, sometimes sardonic good guy.[23] While Redford did not receive an Academy Award or Golden Globe nomination for playing the Sundance Kid, he did win a British Academy of Film and Television Award (BAFTA) for that role and his parts in Downhill Racer[24] (1969) and Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969). The latter two films and the subsequent Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970), and The Hot Rock (1972) were not commercially successful. The political satire The Candidate (1972) was a moderate box office and critical success.

Redford in a publicity still for Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969)

Starting in 1973, Redford experienced an almost-unparalleled four-year run of box office success. The western Jeremiah Johnson's (1972) box office earnings from early 1973 until its second re-release in 1975 would have placed it as the No. 2 highest-grossing film of 1973.[25] The romantic period drama with Barbra Streisand, The Way We Were (1973), was the 11th highest-grossing film of 1973.[25] The crime caper reunion with Paul Newman, The Sting (1973), became the top-grossing film of 1974[26] and one of the top 20 highest-grossing movies of all time when adjusted for inflation, plus landed Redford the lone nomination of his career for the Academy Award for Best Actor.[4] The romantic drama The Great Gatsby (1974) was the No. 8 highest-grossing film of 1974.[26] Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) placed as the No. 10 highest-grossing film for 1974 as it was re-released due to the popularity of The Sting.[26] In 1974 Redford became the first performer since Bing Crosby in 1946 to have three films in a year's top ten grossing titles. Each year between 1974 and 1976, movie exhibitors voted Redford Hollywood's top box-office star.[4]

In 1975, Redford's hit movies included 1920s aviation drama, The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), and the spy thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975), alongside Faye Dunaway, which finished at Nos. 16 and 17 in box office grosses for 1975, respectively.[27] In 1976 he co-starred with Dustin Hoffman in the No. 2 highest-grossing film for the year, the critically acclaimed All the President's Men.[28] In 1975, 1977 and 1978, Redford won the Golden Globe for Favorite World Film Star, a popularity-based award that is no longer awarded.

All the President's Men (1976), in which Redford and Hoffman play Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, was a landmark film for Redford. Not only was he the executive producer and co-star, but the film's serious subject matter — the Watergate scandal — and its attempt to create a realistic portrayal of journalism also reflected the actor's offscreen concerns for political causes.[4] The film landed eight Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture and Best Director (Alan J. Pakula), while winning for the Best Screenplay (Goldman). It actually won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Picture and Best Director.

In 1977, Redford appeared in a segment of the war film A Bridge Too Far (1977). Then he took a two-year hiatus from movies, before starring as past-his-prime rodeo star in the adventure-romance The Electric Horseman (1979). This film reunited him with Jane Fonda, finishing at No. 9 in the box office for 1980.[29] Later that year he appeared in the prison drama Brubaker (1980), playing a prison warden attempting to reform the system. His directorial debut, Ordinary People, which followed the disintegration of an upper-class American family after the death of a son, was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning four Oscars, including Best Director for Redford himself, and Best Picture.

Soon after that, he starred in the baseball drama The Natural (1984).[4] Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1985), with Redford in the male lead role opposite Meryl Streep, became a large box office success (combined 1985 and 1986 grosses placed it at No. 5 for 1986),[30] won a Golden Globe for Best Picture,[31] and won seven Oscars, including Best Picture. Streep was nominated for Best Actress but Redford did not receive a nomination. The movie proved to be Redford's biggest success of the decade and Redford and Pollack's most successful of their seven movies together.[4]

Redford's next film, Legal Eagles (1986) alongside Debra Winger, was only a minor success at the box office. After that, his second directorial project, The Milagro Beanfield War (1987), failed to generate the same level of attention as Ordinary People.

Redford continued as a major star throughout the 1990s and 2000s. He released his third film as a director, A River Runs Through It, in 1992, which was a return to mainstream success for Redford as a director and brought a young Brad Pitt to greater prominence. In 1993, he played what became one of his most popular and recognized roles, starring in Indecent Proposal as a millionaire businessman who tests a couple's morals; the film became one of the year's biggest hits. He co-starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in the newsroom romance Up Close & Personal (1996), and with Kristin Scott Thomas and a young Scarlett Johansson in The Horse Whisperer (1998), which he also directed.[4] Redford also continued work in films with political contexts, such as Havana (1990), playing Jack Weil, a professional gambler in 1959 Cuba during the Revolution, as well as Sneakers (1992), in which he co-starred with River Phoenix and Sidney Poitier, his first teaming with the latter.

He appeared as a disgraced Army general sent to prison in the prison drama The Last Castle (2001), directed by Rod Lurie. In the same year, Redford reteamed with Brad Pitt for Spy Game, another success for the pair but with Redford switching this time from director to actor. During that time, he planned to direct and star in a sequel of The Candidate[32] but the project never happened.[33] Redford, a leading environmental activist, narrated the IMAX documentary Sacred Planet (2004), a sweeping journey across the globe to some of its most exotic and endangered places. In The Clearing (2004), a thriller co-starring Helen Mirren, Redford was a successful businessman whose kidnapping unearths the secrets and inadequacies that led to his achieving the American Dream.

Redford stepped back into producing with The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), a coming-of-age road film about a young medical student, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and his friend Alberto Granado. It also explored the political and social issues of South America that influenced Guevara and shaped his future. With five years spent on the film's making, Redford was credited by director Walter Salles for being instrumental in getting it made and released.

Redford in 2005

Back in front of the camera, Redford received good notices for his role in director Lasse Hallström's An Unfinished Life (2005) as a cantankerous rancher who is forced to take in his estranged daughter-in-law (Jennifer Lopez)—whom he blames for his son's death—and the granddaughter he never knew he had when they fled an abusive relationship. The film, which sat on the shelf for many months while its distributor Miramax was restructured, was generally dismissed as clichéd and overly sentimental. Meanwhile, Redford returned to familiar territory when he reteamed with Meryl Streep 22 years after they starred in Out of Africa, for his personal project Lions for Lambs (2007), which also starred Tom Cruise. After a great deal of hype, the film opened to mixed reviews and disappointing box office.

Redford appeared in the 2011 documentary Buck by Cindy Meehl, where he discussed his experiences with title subject Buck Brannaman during the production of The Horse Whisperer. In 2012, Redford directed The Company You Keep, in which he starred as a former Weather Underground activist who goes on the run after a journalist discovers his identity. In 2013, he starred in All Is Lost, directed by J.C. Chandor, about a man lost at sea. He received acclaim for his performance in the film, in which he is its only cast member and there is almost no dialogue. Redford was nominated for a Golden Globe, his first Best Actor nomination for a Golden Globe, and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor, his first time winning an acting honour from that group (he had been nominated in 1969 for Downhill Racer).

In April 2014, Redford played the main antagonist of the Marvel Studios superhero film Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Alexander Pierce, the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. and leader of the Hydra cell operating the Triskelion.[34] Redford was a co-producer and, with Emma Thompson and Nick Nolte, costar of the 2015 Broad Green Pictures film A Walk in the Woods, based on Bill Bryson's book of the same name. Redford had optioned the film rights for the book from Bryson after reading it more than a decade earlier, with the intent of costarring in it with Paul Newman, but had shelved the project after Newman's death.[35] The same year, he played news anchor Dan Rather in James Vanderbilt's Truth alongside Cate Blanchett. In 2016, he took the supporting role of Mr. Meacham in the Disney remake Pete's Dragon.

Redford starred in The Discovery and Our Souls at Night, both released on Netflix streaming in 2017. The latter film, which was also produced by Redford, reunited him with co-star Jane Fonda for the fourth time and garnered positive reviews.[36] Redford played bank robber Forrest Tucker in the drama film The Old Man & the Gun, which was released in September 2018, and for which he received a Golden Globe nomination.

In August 2018, Redford announced his retirement from acting after completion of the film, though the following month, Redford stated that he "regretted" announcing his retirement because "you never know".[37] He briefly reprised his role as Alexander Pierce for a cameo appearance in Avengers: Endgame, filmed in 2017 prior to the completion of the former film.[38][39]

In 1976, Robert Redford published The Outlaw Trail: A Journey Through Time. Redford states, "The Outlaw Trail. It was a name that fascinated me - a geographical anchor in Western folklore. Whether real or imagined, it was a name that, for me, held a kind of magic, a freedom, a mystery. I wanted to see it in much the same way as the outlaws did, by horse and by foot, and document the adventure with text and photographs."[40]

Redford with Melanie Griffith and Sônia Braga, promoting The Milagro Beanfield War at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival

Redford had long harbored ambitions to work on both sides of the camera. As early as 1969, Redford had served as the executive producer for Downhill Racer.[4] His first film as director was 1980's Best Picture winner Ordinary People, a drama about the slow disintegration of an upper-middle class family, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director.[4] Redford was credited with obtaining a powerful dramatic performance from Mary Tyler Moore, as well as superb work from Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton, who also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Redford did not direct again until The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), a well-crafted, though not commercially successful, screen version of John Nichols's acclaimed novel of the Southwest. The Milagro Beanfield War is the story of the people of Milagro, New Mexico (based on the real town of Truchas in northern New Mexico), overcoming big developers who set about to ruin their community and force them out with tax increases. Other directorial projects have included the period drama A River Runs Through It (1992), based on Norman Maclean's novella, and the exposé Quiz Show (1994), about the quiz show scandal of the late 1950s.[4] In the latter film, Redford worked from a screenplay by Paul Attanasio with noted cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and a strong cast that featured Paul Scofield, John Turturro, Rob Morrow, and Ralph Fiennes. Redford also directed Matt Damon and Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000). In 2010, Redford released The Conspirator, a period drama revolving around the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In 2012, he directed the political thriller The Company You Keep starring himself, Shia LaBeouf and Julie Christie.

Robert Redford is the co-owner of Wildwood Enterprises, Inc., with Bill Holderman, producer, with the following film credits: Lions for Lambs; Quiz Show; A River Runs Through It; Ordinary People; The Horse Whisperer; The Legend of Bagger Vance; Slums of Beverly Hills; The Motorcycle Diaries; and The Conspirator.[55]

Redford is the president and co-founder of Sundance Productions, with Laura Michalchyshyn.

Most recently, Sundance Productions produced Chicagoland (CNN), Cathedrals of Culture (Berlin Film Festival), The March (PBS) and Emmy nominee All The President's Men Revisited (Discovery), Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno Live!, and To Russia With Love on Epix.[56]