Robert Redford, Oscar-winning actor and director, dies at 89
Robert Redford, the Hollywood Golden boy who has become a director, a liberal activist and a award -winning godfather for an independent cinema under the name of one of his most popular characters, died Tuesday at 89.
Redford died “at his home in Sundance in the mountains of Utah – the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” said Cindi Berger advertisement in a statement. No cause of death has been provided.
After reaching celebrity in the 1960s, Redford was one of the largest stars of the 1970s with films such as “Le Conclusion”, “All the men of the President” and “The Way We was”, capping this decade with the best director Oscar for the 1980s, which appeared in the men and needles of the Wavy. Thanks to his political plea, his desire to assume little glamorous roles or his dedication to provide a platform for low-budget films.
His roles ranged from the journalist of Washington Post, Bob Woodward, to a mountain man in “Jeremiah Johnson” to a double agent in the Marvel cinematographic universe, and his co-stars included Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise. But his most famous screen partner was his old friend and colleague activist and Joker Paul Newman, their film a variation in their warm relationship and off -screen teasing. Redford played the Wily Outlaw in front of Newman in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” of 1969, a Smash at the box office from which the Sundance Institute and Festival of Redford took its name. He also teamed up with Newman on the best winner of the best film of 1973, “The Sting”, which earned Redford a nomination of the best actors as a young crook in Chicago in the 1930s.
The cinema roles after the 1970s became more sporadic while Redford focused on achieving and production, and its new role as patriarch of the independent movement in the 1980s and 90s through its Sundance Institute. But he played in the champion of the best film of 1985 “Out of Africa” and in 2013 received some of the best criticisms of his shipwrecked sailor career in “All is lost”, in which he was the only artist in the film. In 2018, he was again congratulated in what he called his farewell film, “the old man and the pistol”.
“I think I have had a long career of which I am very satisfied. It’s been so long, since I was 21 years old,” he told the Associated Press shortly before the film’s release. “I think that now, when I arrive in the 80s, it may be time to go to retirement and spend more time with my wife and family.”
Sundance was born
Redford had seen Hollywood become more prudent and controlling in the 1970s and wanted to resume the creative spirit of the first part of the decade. Sundance was created to move away from new talents far from Hollywood pressures, the institute offering a training ground and the festival, based in Park City, in Utah, where Redford had bought land in the initial hope of opening a ski resort. Instead, Park City has become a place of discovery for previously unknown filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aronofsky.
“For me, the word to underline is” independence “,” said Redford at the AP in 2018. “I always believed in this word. This is what made me want to create a category that supported independent artists who did not have the chance to be heard.
“The industry was fairly well controlled by the dominant current, of which I was a part. But I saw other stories that were not lucky to say and I thought:” Well, I can perhaps engage my energies to give these people a chance. “Going back there, I feel very good about it.
Sundance was even criticized while buyers invaded by looking for potential tubes and celebrities invaded the city every winter.
“We have never changed our policies on how we program our festival. It has always been built on diversity,” said Redford at the AP in 2004. “The fact is that diversity has become commercial. Because independent films have obtained their own success, Hollywood, being just a business, will seize them. So, when Hollywood grabs your films, they Hollywood. “
Sundance Institute X Chicago soon opens, a siege of rank during the time of the creation of current films
By 2025, the festival had become so important that the organizers decided that they had exceeded Park City and had approved the move to Boulder, Colorado, from 2027. Redford, who had attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, published a declaration saying that “the change is inevitable, we must always evolve and grow, which was at the heart of our survival”.
Redford married twice, more recently in Sibylle Szaggars. He had four children, two of whom died – Scott Anthony, deceased at a young age, in 1959; And James Redford, an activist and filmmaker who died in 2020.
Redford’s first life
Robert Redford was born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on August 18, 1937, in Santa Monica, a boy from California whose blonde beauty made his way on a learning on television and live theater who finally led to the big screen.
Redford attended the college on a baseball scholarship and would later play as an average age -age in “The Natural” of 1984, the adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s baseball novel. He had an early interest in drawing and painting, then continued to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, his debut in Broadway in the late 1950s and moved to television in shows such as “The Twilight Zone”, “Alfred Hitchcock presents” and “The Untouchables”.
After marking a Broadway lead in “Sunday in New York”, Redford was interpreted by director Mike Nichols in a production of “Barefoot in the Park” by Neil Simon, with Fonda in the cinematographic version later. Redford missed one of the greatest successes of Nichols, “The Graduate”, released in 1967. Nichols had planned to launch Redford in the role finally played by Dustin Hoffman, but Redford seemed unable to relate to the socially awkward young man who ended up having an affair with one of his parents’ friends.
“I said,” You can’t play it. You can never play a loser, “said Nichols during a film in 2003 of the film in New York. “And Redford said,” What do you mean? Of course, I can play a loser. “And I said,” Ok, have you ever struck with a girl? “And he said,” What do you mean? “And he didn’t kid.
Bob Thomas, a long -standing journalist by the Associated Press who died in 2014, was the main editor of this Billology.
Originally published:
