The Brief
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- Robert Redford has died at the age of 89.
- The New York Times was the first to report his death, citing a statement from a publicity agency.
- Redford was an Oscar-winning actor, director, and godfather for independent cinema as the founder of Sundance.
- Hollywood icon Robert Redford has died Tuesday at 89.
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What they’re saying:
Redford died “at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah — the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” publicist Cindi Berger said in a statement that was reported by The Associated Press. No cause of death was provided.
File: Robert Redford filming Three Days of the Condor; circa 1970; New York. (Photo by Art Zelin/Getty Images)
Big picture view:
Redford was an Oscar-winning actor, director, and godfather for independent cinema as the founder of the Sundance Film Festival.
Robert Redford movies
The backstory:
After rising to stardom in the 1960s, Redford was one of the biggest stars of the ’70s with such films as “The Candidate,” “All the President’s Men” and “The Way We Were,” capping that decade with the best director Oscar for 1980’s “Ordinary People,” which also won best picture in 1980.
His co-stars included Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise. But his most famous screen partner was his old friend and fellow activist and practical joker Paul Newman, their films a variation of their warm, teasing relationship off screen.
“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”
File: Robert Redford and Paul Newman in pose for the 1969 western ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’. (Photo by Screen Archives/Getty Images)
Redford played the wily outlaw opposite Newman in 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” a box-office smash from which Redford’s Sundance Institute and festival got its name.
Sundance founder
Dig deeper:
Redford had watched Hollywood grow more cautious and controlling during the 1970s and wanted to recapture the creative spirit of the early part of the decade.
Sundance was created to nurture new talent away from the pressures of Hollywood, the institute providing a training ground and the festival, based in Park City, Utah, where Redford had purchased land with the initial hope of opening a ski resort.
Instead, Park City became a place of discovery for such previously unknown filmmakers as Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aronofsky.
What they’re saying:
“The industry was pretty well controlled by the mainstream, which I was a part of. But I saw other stories out there that weren’t having a chance to be told and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can commit my energies to giving those people a chance.’ As I look back on it, I feel very good about that,” Redford told the AP in 2018.
What’s next:
Presently, the festival has become so prominent that organizers decided they had outgrown Park City and have approved relocating to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027. Redford, who had attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, issued a statement saying that “change is inevitable, we must always evolve and grow, which has been at the core of our survival.”
