Robert Redford, the actor, director and founder of the Sundance Institute who became one of Hollywood’s most recognizable leading men, died in his sleep at his home in Utah on Tuesday. He was 89, The New York Times reported.
Redford’s six-decade career encompassed high-profile acting roles in films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men and The Way We Were, an Academy Award for directing Ordinary People (1980), and the founding of the Sundance Institute in 1981, which went on to establish the Sundance Film Festival as a major platform for independent cinema.
Born Charles Robert Redford Jr. in 1936, he rose from modest beginnings in Southern California to become a defining screen presence of his generation. Early in life he endured health and family setbacks that he later said shaped him. As a child he contracted a mild case of polio that left him bedridden for weeks. He lost his mother at 18, an event he described in later interviews as ‘‘so unfair’’ and which he said pushed him to leave school and travel, studying art in Paris before turning to acting.
Redford’s path to stardom included stage work and small screen appearances before breakthrough film roles in the 1960s. He was widely admired for a blend of charisma and restraint that made him a sought-after costar for actresses including Barbra Streisand and Jane Fonda. Accounts in published biographies and interviews recount on-set chemistry with Streisand during the 1973 film The Way We Were and Fonda’s repeated comments over decades that she developed strong feelings while working with him; both actors and Redford described their relationships as professional and long-standing friendships.
He married historian and producer Lola Van Wagenen in 1958. The couple had four children but faced early and later family tragedies. Their first son, Scott, died of sudden infant death syndrome at 10 weeks. Their son Jamie suffered chronic health problems and died in October 2020 from liver cancer at 58. Redford and Van Wagenen divorced in 1985. He married German artist Sibylle Szaggars in 2009; she and Redford shared an interest in environmental activism and public arts projects.
In interviews and biographies, Redford discussed episodes from his youth that included membership in a high school street gang, being expelled from college after losing a baseball scholarship, and a period of travel and artistic study in Europe. Those experiences preceded his dramatic and film career, which later included a move into directing and producing. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Ordinary People and was widely credited with helping nurture independent filmmaking through the Sundance Institute and its associated festival.
Redford’s family life included other traumatic episodes. Published reports note that his daughter Shauna survived a severe car accident and that a former boyfriend of hers was shot and killed. Redford spoke in interviews about the toll of such private losses and the limits of public perception of his life, saying that outward success did not negate the difficulties his family endured.
His second wife, Sibylle Szaggars Redford, is an environmental artist who launched projects aimed at raising ecological awareness; the couple received recognition for their activism. Szaggars founded The Way of the Rain in 2015, with Redford serving in a leadership role, and the two were honored at multiple events for their environmental and cultural work.
Professionally, Redford’s influence extended beyond his on-screen performances. The Sundance Film Festival grew from the Institute he founded into a leading showcase for independent filmmakers in the United States and internationally. Filmmakers, critics and festival organizers have credited Sundance with reshaping distribution and exhibition models for independent film and creating a year-round community for new American and international voices.
Accounts of Redford’s interactions with costars and colleagues, including published recollections and recent biographies, describe a mixture of on- and off-screen rapport. Some sources reported anecdotes about on-set dynamics during major films; such items have been presented in biographies and feature articles and reflect the persistent public interest in his screen partnerships.
Redford’s awards and honors included the Academy Award for directing, lifetime achievement recognitions and institutional tributes linked to his work as an actor, director and advocate for independent film. His death marks the passing of a figure who occupied a central place in American film for much of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Survivors include his wife, Sibylle Szaggars Redford, two daughters and grandchildren, according to published reports. Coverage of his death and career is continuing across outlets, and statements from colleagues, family members and institutions tied to the Sundance Institute were expected to follow as tributes and remembrances are prepared.
Redford’s legacy is likely to be considered in several strands: his body of work as an actor and director, his role as a founder and patron of independent cinema through Sundance, and the personal history of resilience and loss that he described in interviews and biographies over the years.