Description
ROBERT REDFORD BIOGRAPHY :
Charles Robert Redford Jr. (born August 18, 1936) is an American actor, director, and activist. He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards nominations with one win, a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Appearing on stage in the late 1950s, Redford’s television career began in 1960, including an appearance on The Twilight Zone in 1962. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (1962). His greatest Broadway success was as the stuffy newly-wed husband of co-star Elizabeth Ashley’s character in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park (1963). Redford made his film debut in War Hunt (1962). He starred with Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover (1965) which won him a Golden Globe for the best new star. He starred alongside Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), which was a huge success and made him a major star. He had a critical and box office hit with Jeremiah Johnson (1972), and in 1973 he had the greatest hit of his career, the blockbuster crime caper The Sting, a reunion with Paul Newman, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award; that same year, he also starred opposite Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. The popular and acclaimed All the President’s Men (1976) was a landmark film for Redford. In the 1980s, Redford began his career as a director with Ordinary People (1980), which was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning four Oscars including Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Director for Redford. He continued acting and starred in Brubaker (1980), as well as playing the male lead in Out of Africa (1985), which was an enormous box office success and won seven Oscars including Best Picture. He released his third film as a director, A River Runs Through It, in 1992. He went on to receive Best Director and Best Picture nominations in 1995 for Quiz Show. He received a second Academy Award—for Lifetime Achievement—in 2002. In 2010, he was made a chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. Redford is also one of the founders of the Sundance Film Festival.
Charles Robert Redford Jr. (born August 18, 1936) is an American actor, director, and activist. He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards nominations with one win, a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Appearing on stage in the late 1950s, Redford’s television career began in 1960, including an appearance on The Twilight Zone in 1962. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (1962). His greatest Broadway success was as the stuffy newly-wed husband of co-star Elizabeth Ashley’s character in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park (1963). Redford made his film debut in War Hunt (1962). He starred with Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover (1965) which won him a Golden Globe for the best new star. He starred alongside Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), which was a huge success and made him a major star. He had a critical and box office hit with Jeremiah Johnson (1972), and in 1973 he had the greatest hit of his career, the blockbuster crime caper The Sting, a reunion with Paul Newman, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award; that same year, he also starred opposite Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. The popular and acclaimed All the President’s Men (1976) was a landmark film for Redford. In the 1980s, Redford began his career as a director with Ordinary People (1980), which was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning four Oscars including Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Director for Redford. He continued acting and starred in Brubaker (1980), as well as playing the male lead in Out of Africa (1985), which was an enormous box office success and won seven Oscars including Best Picture. He released his third film as a director, A River Runs Through It, in 1992. He went on to receive Best Director and Best Picture nominations in 1995 for Quiz Show. He received a second Academy Award—for Lifetime Achievement—in 2002. In 2010, he was made a chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur. Redford is also one of the founders of the Sundance Film Festival.
Early life
Redford was born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California, to Martha Hart (1914–1955) and Charles Robert Redford (1914–1991), an accountant and milkman. He has a half brother, William, from his father’s first marriage. Redford is of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. His patrilineal great-great grandfather, Englishman Elisha Redford, married Irish-Catholic Mary Ann McCreery in Manchester Cathedral; they emigrated to New York City in 1849, immediately settling in Stonington, Connecticut. They had a son named Charles, the first in line to have been given the name. Redford’s maternal lineage, the Harts, were Irish from Galway, the Greens were Scots-Irish who settled in the 18th century. Redford’s family moved to Van Nuys, Los Angeles, while his father worked in El Segundo. Robert attended Van Nuys High School, where he was classmates with baseball pitcher Don Drysdale. He has described himself as having been a “bad” student, finding inspiration outside the classroom, and being interested in art and sports. He hit tennis balls with Pancho Gonzales at the Los Angeles Tennis Club to warm him up. After graduating from high school in 1954, he attended the University of Colorado Boulder in Boulder, Colorado for a year and a half, where he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. While there, he worked at a restaurant/bar called The Sink, where a painting of his likeness still figures prominently among the bar’s murals. While at Colorado, Redford began drinking heavily and, as a result, lost his half-scholarship and was kicked out of school. He went on to travel in Europe, living in France, Spain, and Italy. He later studied painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and took classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Class of 1959) in New York City.
Redford was born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California, to Martha Hart (1914–1955) and Charles Robert Redford (1914–1991), an accountant and milkman. He has a half brother, William, from his father’s first marriage. Redford is of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. His patrilineal great-great grandfather, Englishman Elisha Redford, married Irish-Catholic Mary Ann McCreery in Manchester Cathedral; they emigrated to New York City in 1849, immediately settling in Stonington, Connecticut. They had a son named Charles, the first in line to have been given the name. Redford’s maternal lineage, the Harts, were Irish from Galway, the Greens were Scots-Irish who settled in the 18th century. Redford’s family moved to Van Nuys, Los Angeles, while his father worked in El Segundo. Robert attended Van Nuys High School, where he was classmates with baseball pitcher Don Drysdale. He has described himself as having been a “bad” student, finding inspiration outside the classroom, and being interested in art and sports. He hit tennis balls with Pancho Gonzales at the Los Angeles Tennis Club to warm him up. After graduating from high school in 1954, he attended the University of Colorado Boulder in Boulder, Colorado for a year and a half, where he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. While there, he worked at a restaurant/bar called The Sink, where a painting of his likeness still figures prominently among the bar’s murals. While at Colorado, Redford began drinking heavily and, as a result, lost his half-scholarship and was kicked out of school. He went on to travel in Europe, living in France, Spain, and Italy. He later studied painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and took classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Class of 1959) in New York City.
Career
Theater
Redford’s career, like that of many major stars who emerged in the 1950s, began in New York City, where an 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.
Television
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 (playing the character ‘Death’), The Virginian, and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion with a young Christopher Plummer, among others. 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. 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. In July 2019, it was announced that Redford would play President Robert Redford, a fictionalized, alternate universe version of himself, in the HBO drama series Watchmen. In the show’s timeline, Redford has been President of the United States since 1993 and is still President in 2019 (beyond the two four-year terms allowed in real life). In the original Watchmen comic book that the show is a sequel to, Redford is mentioned as a contender for the 1988 election against Richard Nixon (who also continued his presidency beyond the two terms). It was later clarified that Redford himself would not appear in the show and that his name was simply being used as a tribute to the comic, although his likeness is used in the series’s first episode, “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice”.
Film
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 a soldier who spends years of his life hiding behind enemy lines. 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) and were again co-stars much 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 and turned down roles in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate. 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, cementing his screen image as an intelligent, reliable, sometimes sardonic good guy. 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; (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. 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. The romantic period drama with Barbra Streisand, The Way We Were (1973), was the 11th highest-grossing film of 1973. The crime caper reunion with Paul Newman, The Sting (1973), became the top-grossing film of 1974 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. The romantic drama The Great Gatsby (1974) was the No. 8 highest-grossing film of 1974. As well, 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid placed as the No. 10 highest-grossing film for 1974 as it was re-released due to the popularity of The Sting. 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. 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. 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. In 1975, 1977 and 1978, Redford won the Golden Globe for Favourite 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. 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. Later that year he appeared in the prison drama Brubaker (1980), playing a prison warden attempting to reform the system. As well, 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). 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), won a Golden Globe for Best Picture, 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. 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, Redford 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. 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 star who had experienced film success several years before Redford. 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 but the project never happened. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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”. 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.
Author
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.”
Theater
Redford’s career, like that of many major stars who emerged in the 1950s, began in New York City, where an 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.
Television
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 (playing the character ‘Death’), The Virginian, and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion with a young Christopher Plummer, among others. 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. 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. In July 2019, it was announced that Redford would play President Robert Redford, a fictionalized, alternate universe version of himself, in the HBO drama series Watchmen. In the show’s timeline, Redford has been President of the United States since 1993 and is still President in 2019 (beyond the two four-year terms allowed in real life). In the original Watchmen comic book that the show is a sequel to, Redford is mentioned as a contender for the 1988 election against Richard Nixon (who also continued his presidency beyond the two terms). It was later clarified that Redford himself would not appear in the show and that his name was simply being used as a tribute to the comic, although his likeness is used in the series’s first episode, “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice”.
Film
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 a soldier who spends years of his life hiding behind enemy lines. 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) and were again co-stars much 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 and turned down roles in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate. 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, cementing his screen image as an intelligent, reliable, sometimes sardonic good guy. 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; (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. 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. The romantic period drama with Barbra Streisand, The Way We Were (1973), was the 11th highest-grossing film of 1973. The crime caper reunion with Paul Newman, The Sting (1973), became the top-grossing film of 1974 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. The romantic drama The Great Gatsby (1974) was the No. 8 highest-grossing film of 1974. As well, 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid placed as the No. 10 highest-grossing film for 1974 as it was re-released due to the popularity of The Sting. 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. 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. 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. In 1975, 1977 and 1978, Redford won the Golden Globe for Favourite 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. 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. Later that year he appeared in the prison drama Brubaker (1980), playing a prison warden attempting to reform the system. As well, 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). 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), won a Golden Globe for Best Picture, 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. 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, Redford 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. 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 star who had experienced film success several years before Redford. 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 but the project never happened. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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”. 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.
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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.”