Robert Redford, Hollywood Leading Man & Star of Barefoot in the Park on Broadway, Dies at 89

Robert Redford, a classic Hollywood actor who dominated the screen through the 1970s and swept America off its feet with a knee-weakening smile and penchant for romantic leading roles, died on September 16 in his home outside Provo, Utah. He was 89. According to a statement by Cindi Berger of the publicity firm Rogers & Cowan PMK, he died in his sleep. No cause was specified. 

Redford, a staple of American cinema and among the most admired and recognizable Hollywood leading men, established a niche for himself in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), a sunny, Western-style escapist comedy that captured the imagination of American counterculture and built Redford as a reliable good guy. Through the 1970s, roles in Downhill Racer (1969), The Candidate (1972), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Way We Were (1973), The Sting (1973)—earning Redford his lone Academy Award nomination for Best Actor—Three Days of Condor (1975), All the President’s Men (1976) and The Electric Horseman (1979) solidified his status as Hollywood’s chosen leading man. 

In 1978, Redford founded the Sundance Film Festival and, throughout the 1980s, occupied himself largely with its success, a choice that mirrored Redford’s shift into directing and, alongside his continued work in expensive motion pictures, independent filmmaking. In 1981, he was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director and won a Golden Globe in the same category for directing Ordinary People. He typified his directorial vision with Quiz Show (1995), earning Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, and his dedication to nurturing indie films was epitomized in A River Runs Through It (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993) and Up Close & Personal (1996). He continued acting, producing and directing through the 2010s and returned to the screen with Jane Fonda in Our Souls at Night (2017).

Like many actors of his time, Redford, who was born in Santa Monica, California in 1936, began his career in New York City, where work could be found on stage and on television. Broadway became an important training ground for the would-be Hollywood actor. After taking classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Redford’s first role was on stage, in a small role in the Broadway comedy Tall Story (1959). Roles in The Highest Tree (1959) and Little Moon of Alban (1960) followed. 

In 1961, Redford appeared in Sunday in New York on Broadway—not yet a star, Redford had booked a few television roles and was beginning to curry favor on the New York stage—and Howard Taubman of the New York Times noticed the young actor’s burgeoning potential to take the mantle of dreamy leading men. “Mr. Redford has personal charm,” he wrote in his review of Sunday in New York. “He will be a matinee idol if he doesn’t look out.” Redford’s next and final Broadway role came in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park (1963), as Paul Bratter, a role he’d later reprise in the play’s film adaptation. 

By the time Redford had finished his stint on Broadway, he’d guest starred on a host of television shows, including Naked City, Maverick, The Untouchables, The Americans, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Captain Brassbound’s Conversation, Rescue 8, The Voice of Charlie Post—earning an Emmy nomination—and Breaking Point. While working on Broadway, he appeared intermittently in the film adaptation of Tall Story (1960)—Jane Fonda made her debut in the same film—and War Hunt (1962).

Having gained a footing in New York’s acting scene, Redford retired his stage and television career and focused his eyes on Los Angeles and Hollywood, appearing in Inside Daisy Clover (1965) alongside Natalie Wood, earning a Golden Globe for Best New Star and appearing alongside Jane Fonda in The Chase (1966). 

“When I started becoming an actor I felt this pull,” Redford, who often kept a photo of the playwright Samuel Beckett on his dressing room mirror, told the New York Times about his acting roots. “What interested me about acting was character work. Craft was important. It's how you got to Hollywood. You apprenticed in New York, in the theater, then went on to doing TV plays,” he said. “Thank God I got in on the end of that—the theater of simple storytelling and bodies in space.”

“I always felt like I missed out on something,” he continued, ever-modest that his career did epitomize an era on film and that his roots in the stage and small screen were part of a definable, palpable training ground for actors. “The Paris art scene in the ’20s, the New York TV community in the ’50s. Just as I got in on it, it vanished. It gave way to the ’60s. Maybe that’s what all this is here,” he said, gesturing to the set of The Horse Whisperer (1998), “my way of re-creating a community.”