Happy 84th Birthday Robert Redford

Today is the 84th birthday of the film legend Robert Redford. His version of Jay Gatsby is the best, by far. His performance in Barefoot in the Park is one of my very favorite of his. The world is a better place because he is in it.

NAME: Robert Redford
OCCUPATION: Film Actor, Environmental Activist, Television Actor, Director, Producer, Theater Actor
BIRTH DATE: August 18, 1936
EDUCATION: American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Van Nuys High School, Pratt Institute, University of Colorado
PLACE OF BIRTH: Santa Monica, California
HEIGHT: 5′ 10″

BEST KNOWN FOR: Actor Robert Redford is a Hollywood legend, known for his roles in acclaimed films like ‘The Sting’ and ‘The Way We Were.’ He is also an accomplished director, producer and entrepreneur, having started the Sundance Institute in the early ’80s.

Born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on August 18, 1936, in a multicultural neighborhood in Santa Monica, California, actor and director Robert Redford has proven to be one of the great talents in American film. He is equally at home behind the scenes as he is in front of the cameras. In addition to his own career, Redford has helped advance others in his field through the Sundance Institute and its related film festival.

Redford’s father was a milk man who later worked as an oil company accountant, while his outgoing mother had a passion for literature and films. Taking after his uncle, Redford excelled at sports during his youth, running track and playing tennis and football while also having a robust romantic life. In other arenas, however, Redford said he floundered.

“Actually, I was a failure at everything I tried. I worked as a box boy at a supermarket and got fired. Then my dad got me a job at Standard Oil—fired again,” he explained to Success magazine in 1980. Redford said he also had a few run-ins with the law for purloining hubcaps and sneaking onto other people’s property to use their pools.

In 1954, Redford graduated from Van Nuys High School. But his mother died in 1955 from septicemia, and a deeply grieving Redford felt lost emotionally.

Redford won a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado, but he did not distinguish himself as an athlete there. Instead, “I became the campus drunk and blew out before I could ever get going,” he told People magazine in a 1998 interview. Some reports say he dropped out, while others say that Redford was expelled from the university. In either case, he soon decided to move to Europe and become an artist.

His time overseas was an eye-opening experience for the young Redford, who lived the life of a bohemian and learned about art, culture and international affairs. Redford’s interactions with students in Paris proved to be very significant. “We all lived in a kind of communal way and I was challenged politically. I didn’t have a clue,” he said in a 2007 New Statesman article. “They would ask me questions—the Algerian War was going on, it was very big in France at the time, this was the late 1950s—I was humiliated. I was ashamed that I didn’t know much about my country’s politics. When I returned to America a year and a half later, I was much more focused on my country culturally and politically.”

After returning to the United States, Redford met Lola Van Wagenan in Los Angeles. The couple married in 1958 and lived in New York City, soon welcoming their first child. Redford studied first at the Pratt Institute and then the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, switching from design to acting. Then in 1959, he and his wife experienced a terrible loss when the couple’s five-month-old son Scott died of sudden infant death syndrome.

A devastated Redford, who had not been raised to openly express emotional trauma, poured himself into his acting and started out his career in the theater. He first appeared on Broadway in the 1959 comedy Tall Story, followed by The Highest Tree later that year. He landed a substantial part in the 1960 drama Little Moon of Alban with Julie Harris, and then co-starred with Conrad Janis in another humorous outing, 1961’s Sunday in the Park. But perhaps his biggest breakthrough came in 1963 with a leading role in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, directed by Mike Nichols. In the romantic comedy, Redford played Paul Bratter, a newlywed lawyer who establishes a Greenwich Village home with his wife Corie (Elizabeth Ashley).

Redford did a good amount of TV work for a time and made his big-screen debut in 1962’s War Hunt. Still, the actor’s film career didn’t really take off until 1967 when he reprised his stage role as Paul in the film adaptation of Barefoot in the Park, opposite Jane Fonda. Redford then gave an iconic, star-making turn in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In the film, he played the outlaw known as the Sundance Kid while co-star Paul Newman portrayed Butch Cassidy. The two proved to be a dynamic duo onscreen and forged a lasting friendship, with the movie enjoying both critical and commercial success.

Not one to be typecast as a “pretty boy” and quite particular about the tone of his projects, Redford sought out more challenging fare and avoided trading on his sex appeal. He tackled the sports drama Downhill Racer and the western Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, both released in 1969. Another important film for Redford was the 1972 political drama The Candidate, a dark, satirical look at campaigning.

As his career thrived, Redford sought refuge from the Hollywood scene. He had bought land in Utah in the 1960s, and he continued to add to his holdings there over the years. His love of land encouraged him to become active in environmental causes. In the 1970s, Redford even received death threats for his efforts to stop certain developments in Utah.

Redford had a banner year in 1973 with two major hit films—The Way We Were and The Sting. In Sydney Pollack’s Way We Were, Redford starred opposite Barbra Streisand in a drama that charts the ups and downs of one couple’s relationship. For The Sting, Redford again joined forces with Newman to play con artists in 1930s Chicago. Redford received his first Academy Award nomination for the film.

The middle of the decade saw the actor starring with Mia Farrow in the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby and then teaming up with Faye Dunaway in the 1975 CIA thriller Three Days of the Condor, also directed by Pollack. Redford returned to political fare and scored another success with 1976’s All the President’s Men. He and Dustin Hoffman played reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in an acclaimed drama about the Watergate scandal.

With 1980’s Ordinary People, Redford showed that he was more than a movie idol, providing a heartbreaking look at a family torn apart by loss and grief. The film served as his directorial debut and starred Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton. The drama brought Redford his first Academy Award—one for best director. Around this time, Redford helped establish the Sundance Institute, created to help and support independent filmmakers through workshops and other means. The Sundance Film Festival (previously established under a different moniker) then became a related platform for indie works to be viewed and promoted, hence positioned as an industry cornerstone for decades.

During the 1980s, Redford chose only a few acting roles. He starred in the baseball drama The Natural (1984) with Robert Duvall and Glenn Close as well as the romance Out of Africa (1985), opposite Meryl Streep. Again working behind the camera, Redford directed The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), starring Ruben Blades and Sonia Braga. The film showcases a group of local farmers struggling against a major development project in their area.

Redford earned great accolades for his rural family drama A River Runs Through It (1992), which starred Brad Pitt and Tom Skerritt. Two years later, he explored the real-life corruption of 1950s game shows in Quiz Show, again earning strong praise for his work and two more Oscar nominations in the categories of directing and best picture. Redford later became a triple threat in 1998’s The Horse Whisperer, working as director, producer and star of the project. He’d also made a couple of high-profile acting appearances in the sexually charged Indecent Proposal (1993), a major hit, and the journalism drama Up Close & Personal (1996), with the latter co-starring Michelle Pfeiffer.

In more recent years, Redford has been selective about his film work. After 2000’s The Legend of Bagger Vance, he directed and starred in 2007’s political drama Lions for Lambs with Tom Cruise and Streep, which proved to be a commercial and critical disappointment. His next directorial effort, The Conspirator, was released in 2011 and looks at the trial of Mary Surratt, the only woman charged in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The following year, Redford directed and starred in The Company You Keep, co-starring Shia LaBeouf and Julie Christie. The thriller tells the story of a 1960s radical who has been living underground and is discovered by a reporter.

Redford gave an impressive performance on the big screen in 2013’s All Is Lost, playing a sailor caught in dire, life-threatening circumstances. After co-starring in the 2014 Marvel Comics outing Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he took on another kind of adventure in the adaptation of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. The following year, Redford portrayed real-world journalist Dan Rather in Truth, a film that explores 60 Minutes’ controversial coverage of George W. Bush’s military service.

Redford has received numerous awards and honors. He has earned his place in film history not only for his own artistic endeavors, but for the opportunities he has provided others to advance their work. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his contributions to the medium in 2001 with an honorary award for serving as an “inspiration to independent and innovative filmmakers everywhere.”

In 2016, Redford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

Redford is currently married to Sibylle Szaggars, a German painter. The couple wed in 2009 in Hamburg after being together since the mid-1990s. His first marriage to wife Lola ended in 1985, and they had four children together—daughters Shauna and Amy and sons Scott and Jamie.

Actor

Film

Year	Title	Role	Director	Notes
1960	Tall Story	Basketball Player	Joshua Logan	Uncredited
1962	War Hunt	Private Roy Loomis	Denis Sanders
1965	Inside Daisy Clover	Wade Lewis	Robert Mulligan
	Situation Hopeless… But Not Serious	Captain Hank Wilson	Gottfried Reinhardt
1966	This Property Is Condemned	Owen Legate	Sydney Pollack
	The Chase	Charlie ‘Bubber’ Reeves	Arthur Penn
1967	Barefoot in the Park	Paul Bratter	Gene Saks
1969	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	Sundance Kid	George Roy Hill
	Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here	Deputy Sheriff Christopher ‘Coop’ Cooper	Abraham Polonsky
	Downhill Racer	David Chappellet	Michael Ritchie
1970	Little Fauss and Big Halsy	Halsy Knox	Sidney J. Furie
1972	Jeremiah Johnson	Jeremiah Johnson	Sydney Pollack
	The Candidate	Bill McKay	Michael Ritchie
	The Hot Rock	John Archibald Dortmunder	Peter Yates
1973	The Sting	Johnny Hooker	George Roy Hill
	The Way We Were	Hubbell Gardiner	Sydney Pollack
1974	The Great Gatsby	Jay Gatsby	Jack Clayton
1975	Three Days of the Condor	Joseph Turner / The Condor	Sydney Pollack
	The Great Waldo Pepper	Waldo Pepper	George Roy Hill
1976	All the President’s Men	Bob Woodward[1]	Alan J. Pakula
1977	A Bridge Too Far	Major Julian Cook	Richard Attenborough
1979	The Electric Horseman	Norman ‘Sonny’ Steele	Sydney Pollack
1980	Brubaker	Henry Brubaker	Stuart Rosenberg
1984	The Natural	Roy Hobbs	Barry Levinson
1985	Out of Africa	Denys Finch Hatton	Sydney Pollack
1986	Legal Eagles	Tom Logan	Ivan Reitman
1990	Havana	Jack Weil	Sydney Pollack
1992	Sneakers	Martin “Marty” Bishop	Phil Alden Robinson
	Incident at Oglala	Narrator	Michael Apted
1993	Indecent Proposal	John Gage	Adrian Lyne
	La Classe américaine	Steven	Michel Hazanavicius & Dominique Mézerette
1996	Up Close & Personal	Warren Justice	Jon Avnet
1998	The Horse Whisperer	Tom Booker	Himself	Also producer
2001	The Last Castle	Lieutenant General Eugene Irwin	Rod Lurie
	Spy Game	Nathan D. Muir	Tony Scott
2004	The Clearing	Wayne Hayes	Pieter Jan Brugge
2005	An Unfinished Life	Einar Gilkyson	Lasse Hallström
2006	Charlotte’s Web	Ike the Horse	Gary Winick	Voice
2007	Lions for Lambs	Dr. Stephen Malley	Himself	Also producer
2012	The Company You Keep	Jim Grant / Nick Sloan
2013	All Is Lost	Our Man	J.C. Chandor
2014	Captain America: The Winter Soldier	Alexander Pierce	Anthony and Joe Russo
2015	A Walk in the Woods	Bill Bryson	Ken Kwapis	Also producer
	Truth	Dan Rather	James Vanderbilt
2016	Pete’s Dragon	Mr. Meacham	David Lowery
2017	The Discovery	Thomas Harbor	Charlie McDowell
	Our Souls at Night	Louis Waters	Ritesh Batra	Also producer
2018	The Old Man & the Gun	Forrest Tucker	David Lowery	Also producer
	Buttons	Narrator (voice)	Tim Janis
2019	Avengers: Endgame	Alexander Pierce	Anthony and Joe Russo	Cameo; final film role
2020	Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia	Lokia the Dolphin Monster (voice)	Hannah Fidell, Alexa Lim Haas, Dan Kwan, Lucas Leyva, Olivia West Lloyd, Jillian Mayer, The Meza Brothers , Terence Nance, Brett Potter, Dylan Redford, Xander Robin, Julian Yuri Rodriguez, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Daniel Scheinert

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1960	Maverick	Jimmy Coleman	Episode 76: “Iron Hand”
	Rescue 8	Danny Tilford	Episode 67: “Breakdown”
	The Deputy	Burt Johnson	Episode 31: “The Last Gunfight”
	Playhouse 90	Lieutenant Lott	Episode 134: “In the Presence of Mine Enemies”
	Tate	John Torsett	Episode 3: “The Bounty Hunter”
		Tad Dundee	Episode 8: “Comanche Scalps”
	Moment of Fear	Stranger	Episode 1: “The Golden Deed”
	Perry Mason	Dick Hart	Episode 96: “The Case of the Treacherous Toupee”
	The Iceman Cometh	Don Parritt	TV production
1961	Alfred Hitchcock Presents	Charlie Pugh	Episode 11: “The Right Kind of Medicine”
	Route 66	Janosh	Episode 35: “First-Class Mouliak”
	Whispering Smith	Johnny	Episode 2: “The Grudge”
	Naked City	Baldwin Larne	Episode 60: “Tombstone for a Derelict”
1962	Dr. Kildare	Medical Student	Season 2 Episode 2: “The Burning Sky”
	The Twilight Zone	Harold Beldon	Episode 81: “Nothing in the Dark”
1963	The Untouchables	Jack Parker	Episode 103: “Snowball”
	The Virginian	Matthew Cordell	Episode 34 (2.4): “A Killer in Town” ??
	The Virginian	Matthew Cordell	Episode 35 (2.5): “The Evil That Men Do”
	The Alfred Hitchcock Hour	David Chesterman	Episode 18: “A Tangled Web”
2019	Watchmen	President Robert Redford	Voice and Likeness only; Episode 1: “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice”

Director

Year	Title	Notes
1980	Ordinary People
1988	The Milagro Beanfield War	Also producer
1992	A River Runs Through It	Also producer
1994	Quiz Show	Also producer
1998	The Horse Whisperer	Also producer
2000	The Legend of Bagger Vance	Also producer
2007	Lions for Lambs	Also producer
2010	The Conspirator	Also producer
2012	The Company You Keep	Also producer
2014	Cathedrals of Culture	Documentary, segment: “The Salk Institute”

Producer with Wildwood Enterprises, Inc

Year	Title	Notes
1987	Promised Land	Executive producer
1988	Some Girls	Executive producer
1991	The Dark Wind	Executive producer
1996	She’s the One	Executive producer
1998	No Looking Back	Executive producer
	Central Station
	Slums of Beverly Hills	Executive producer
	A Civil Action
2002	How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog	Executive producer
	Love in the Time of Money	Executive producer
	People I Know	Executive producer
	Skinwalkers	TV movie; executive producer
2004	The Motorcycle Diaries	Executive producer
2013	The March	Documentary, Executive producer
2014	Drunktown’s Finest	Executive producer
2015	The Adderall Diaries	Executive producer
2017	American Epic	Executive producer
	The American Epic Sessions	Executive producer

Narrator

Year	Title	Notes
1970	The Making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	Documentary
1971	The Language And The Music Of The Wolves	Project of The Natural History Magazine
1974	Following the Tundra Wolf	Documentary
1975	Broken Treaty at Battle Mountain	Documentary
1977	The Predators	Documentary
1983	The Sun Dagger	Documentary
1986	Audubon Video: Grizzly and Man – Uneasy Truce	Documentary
1988	Audubon Video: California Condor	Documentary
1989	Changing Steps	Documentary
	To Protect Mother Earth	Documentary
1990	American Experience: Yosemite – The Fate of Heaven	Documentary
1992	A River Runs Through It	Also director and producer
	Incident at Oglala	Documentary
1997	Mountain Climbing: Free Climb	Documentary
1998	Wallace Stegner: A Writer’s Life	Documentary
1999	The Mystery of Chaco Canyon	Documentary
2004	Sacred Planet
2006	Charlotte’s Web	Voice of Ike the horse
	Cosmic Collisions	Documentary
	Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures	Narrated two episodes
2008	Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars	Documentary
	Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk	Documentary on the Colorado River
2009	Saving The Bay	Documentary on the San Francisco Bay
2010	Stories From The Gulf	Documentary project of NRDC
2012	The Movement: One Man Joins An Uprising	Project of the Make A Hero organization
2016	National Parks Adventure	Project of MacGillivray Freeman
2017	American Epic	Documentary film series
	Earth: One Amazing Day	BBC documentary

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