MOVIE NEWS – Robert Redford, the charismatic actor and Academy Award-winning director who consistently distanced himself from the image of a Hollywood superstar to devote himself to causes he found meaningful, has passed away, confirmed Cindi Berger, Chairman and CEO of Rogers and Cowan PMK. He was 89.

“Robert Redford died on September 16, 2025, at his home in the Sundance mountains of Utah – the place he loved most, surrounded by the people he cherished. His absence will be deeply felt”, Berger said in a statement to CNN. “The family requests privacy.”

Redford became internationally known through leading roles in films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, while also establishing himself as a director with award-winning works including Ordinary People and A River Runs Through It.

His dedication to the craft of filmmaking inspired him to establish the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit devoted to supporting independent cinema and theater, which became globally recognized through its annual Sundance Film Festival.

Redford was also a passionate environmentalist. In 1961 he moved to Utah and later became a prominent voice in efforts to protect the natural beauty of the state and the American West.

He continued acting well into later life: in 2017, he reunited with Jane Fonda in the Netflix feature Our Souls at Night. The following year, at the age of 82, he starred in The Old Man & the Gun, which he called his last performance – though he stressed that retirement was never part of his vocabulary.

“For me, retiring means giving up or stopping altogether”, he told CBS Sunday Morning in 2018. “Life is here to be lived – why not embrace it fully for as long as you can?”

In October 2020, he published an opinion piece for CNN in which he voiced frustration that climate change was not being treated as a priority during the devastating wildfires in the western United States. That same month, Redford endured a devastating personal loss when his son, David James Redford, died of cancer at the age of 58.

David James Redford – the third of four children Redford had with his former wife, Lola Van Wagenen – followed in his father’s footsteps as a filmmaker, activist, and philanthropist.

A Restless Youth

Born in Santa Monica, California, in 1936, Redford grew up near Los Angeles. His father worked long hours first as a milkman and later as an accountant before relocating the family to a bigger home in Van Nuys. “I didn’t see much of him”, Redford recalled during a 2005 episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio.

Because the family couldn’t afford childcare, Redford often spent his days in the children’s section of the local library, where he became fascinated by Greek and Roman mythology.

He was far from an ideal student. “I had no patience… nothing inspired me”, he said. “It was more exciting to fool around and look for adventure outside the limits of the world I was raised in.”

Drawn equally to sports and the arts, Redford earned a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1955. That same year, tragedy struck when his mother passed away. “She was very young, not even forty”, he later recalled.

He described his mother as always encouraging his pursuits, unlike his father: “My father grew up during the Depression. He was afraid to take risks and wanted me to walk a safe, narrow road – but that wasn’t who I was. My mother believed in me no matter what I tried.”

“When I left for Colorado and she died, I realized I never had the chance to thank her.”

Afterward, he turned to alcohol, lost his scholarship, and was asked to leave the university. He then worked as a roustabout for Standard Oil and used his wages to fund his art studies in Europe. “I lived hand-to-mouth, but that was fine. I wanted the adventure. I wanted to see how other cultures lived.”

The Rise of a Star

Upon returning to the United States, Redford enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Reserved and shy, he often felt out of place among drama students eager to show off their talent. After one failed classroom performance, a teacher pulled him aside and urged him to continue acting.

He graduated in 1959 and made his screen debut in an episode of Perry Mason. From there, his career took off. In 1963 he achieved major success on Broadway in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, a role he later reprised on film alongside Jane Fonda.

Around this time, he married Lola Van Wagenen and started a family. Their first child, Scott, died of sudden infant death syndrome just months after being born in 1959. They later welcomed Shauna in 1960, David in 1962, and Amy in 1970.

As his acting career accelerated, in 1961 Redford and his family moved to Utah, where he purchased two acres of land for $500 and built a cabin himself. “I realized how much nature mattered to me. I wanted to live in a place where the environment was extreme, and where it felt as though it might last forever”, he told CNN.

He cemented his reputation as a leading man in 1969, starring opposite Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a western that won four Academy Awards. Redford later said he “would forever be indebted” to Newman for helping him secure the role. The two displayed remarkable chemistry on screen, forged a lifelong friendship, and reunited in 1973’s The Sting, which went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

Source: CNN