Robert Redford (1936-2025): Hollywood’s Golden Boy

A young Jane Fonda snuggling up to him in a horse carriage on their way to the honeymoon in Barefoot in the Park (1967). A beautiful Barbra Streisand cradling his face in her hands in the middle of the street in The Way We Were (1973). A luminous Meryl Streep looking up at him while he famously shampooed her hair in Out of Africa (1985).

Robert Redford was the stuff hearthrobs are made of, a constant companion to women of all ages in the 1970s, his blonde good looks masking what we only later understood was his emotional unavailability, his inability to be fully in love. Which is why when he agreed to play a sleazy billionaire who wants to sleep with Demi Moore for one night in Indecent Proposal (1993), a generation of women recoiled almost physically from it.

But that was typical Redford, forever running away from his good looks, a reluctant pretty boy if ever there was one. His favourite figure was the cowboy, whether the conman of Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid (1969) or the mountain man of Jeremiah Jonhson (1972) or even the rodeo rider of The Electric Horseman (1979). It suited him, being remote, solitary and ruggedly individual, much like his beloved co star and friend Paul Newman,,,,

So much so that he physically escaped Hollywood, moving to his beloved Utah where he set up the Sundance Institute and reviving a failing film festival, turning it into the springboard for independent cinema from all over the world, attracting filmlovers, practitioners, and rising stars who would get used to a familiar figure in jeans walking around the town. stopping by to chat.

Redford was a man who felt a lot, about people, politics, nature and cinema. One has to only watch his first directorial film Ordinary People (1980) to understand what a child’s death can do to a family. Or A River Runs Through It (1992) to watch his lyrical take on brotherhood.

Meryl Streep described him as a lion among men, and indeed he was, blonde, beautiful, but also singular and totally aloof. Through many beloved roles like that of the Great Gatsby or the journalist Bob Woodward, of Bill McKay in The Candidate (1972), he remained quintessentially Redford, the golden boy of Hollywood who spent a lifetime trying to escape the gilded cage.

Barefoot in the ParkcinemadeathHollywoodobituaryOut of AfricaRobert RedfordThe Way We Were