BREAKING: Film icon, Oscar-winning director and activist, dead at 89

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FROM ABC NEWS: Robert Redford, the actor and Oscar-winning filmmaker who at his peak was simultaneously one of Hollywood’s most critically lauded directors and bankable leading men, has died at age 89.

“Robert Redford passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah–the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved. He will be missed greatly,” his representative confirmed to ABC News. “The family requests privacy.”

Asked by Esquire UK in 2017 how he’d like to be remembered, Redford replied: “For the work. What really matters is the work. And what matters to me is doing the work. I’m not looking at the back end: ‘What am I going to get out of this? What’s going to be the reward?’ I’m just looking at the work, the pleasure of being able to do the work.”

“And that’s what the fun is: to climb up the mountain is the fun, not standing at the top,” Redford continued. “There’s nowhere to go. But climbing up, that struggle, that to me is where the fun is. That to me is the thrill.

In the 1970s, Redford was a major star in Hollywood. He was both handsome and talented. Over the years, he won an Oscar nomination for best actor for his role in The Sting in 1973. He also won a best-director award for his movie Ordinary People in 1980. And he was nominated for another best director award for his movie Quiz Show in 1994.

He was born Aug. 18, 1936 in Santa Monica, California.

“Redford was a student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his Broadway debut in 1959’s Tall Story, followed by a lead in 1963’s Barefoot in the Park — a role he reprised in the 1967 film adaptation alongside Jane Fonda. His onscreen career began in the early 1960s with roles on TV shows like Tate, Route 66, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone and The Untouchables. And of course, his career reached new heights in 1969 when he landed the role of outlaw the Sundance Kid in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid alongside Paul Newman.” PEOPLE reported.

In a 1019 interview, Redford told Collider: “I was being put up for Butch Cassidy because I’d done the comedy. But that part didn’t interest me.”

“What interested me was the Sundance Kid because I could relate to that based on my own experience and particularly my own childhood and feeling like an outlaw most of my life,” he continued. “So I told [director] George [Roy Hill], and he knew Paul really well and knew he was much more like Butch Cassidy, so George turned it all around. He went to Paul and they argued a bit until Paul finally realized that George was right. He was well known and I wasn’t, which is why they switched the title, too.”

Redford’s long career included memorable films such as

  • The Way We Were (1973)
  • The Sting (1973)
  • The Great Gatsby (1974)
  • All the President’s Men (1976)
  • The Natural (1984)
  • Indecent Proposal (1993)
  • Up Close & Personal (1996)
  • The Horse Whisperer (1998)
  • The Company You Keep (2012)
  • All Is Lost (2013)
  • The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

In 1980, he made his directorial debut with Ordinary People, which won four Academy Awards, including best picture and best director.

“In addition to 1980’s Ordinary People, he directed A River Runs Through It (1992), Quiz Show (1994), The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), Lions for Lambs (2007) and several other films,” PEOPLE reported.

He won an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar in 2002. During his acceptance speech, Redford reflected on his career.

“I’ve spent most of my life just focused on the road ahead, not looking back,” he said at the time. “But now tonight, I’m seeing in the rearview mirror that there is something I’ve not thought about much, called history.”

The actor continued his career “well into his later years,” CNN reports, including “reuniting with Jane Fonda in the 2017 Netflix film Our Souls at Night.”

“To me, retirement means stopping something or quitting something,” he told CBS Sunday Morning in 2018. “There’s this life to lead, why not live it as much as you can as long as you can?”

Redford was also a dedicated environmentalist. He moved to Utah in 1961 and led efforts to preserve the natural landscape there and across the American West.

He founded the Sundance Film Festival in Utah to promote independent films.

Robert is survived by ex-wife Lola Van Wagenen and their four children together: Scott (who died just two months after his birth in 1959 from sudden infant death syndrome), Shauna, James and Amy, according to PEOPLE.

 

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