Actor, activist, and filmmaker Robert Redford was one of the most popular actors of the 1970s and 80s as well as a distinguished director and producer. He died in September 2025. Today’s episode looked back at Redford’s career, one of the most consequential in the history of American movies.
According to Deadline, Redford was born in 1936 and studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. His early career was on the stage and on television. Redford made his Broadway debut in 1959’s Tall Story and later appeared in The High Tree, Little Moon of Alban, and Sunday in New York. On television he had roles in Maverick, Playhouse 90, Perry Mason, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He also starred the Twilight Zone episode “Nothing in the Dark.” Redford’s stage role in Barefoot in the Park led to his first major screen role in the 1967 film. Redford became a star with the release of 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in which he co-starred with Paul Newman. For the next five decades Redford worked steadily both in front and behind the camera in films such as Jeremiah Johnson, The Candidate, The Way We Were, Ordinary People, All the President’s Men, Sneakers, The Horse Whisperer, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and All is Lost.
In 1981 Redford founded the Sundance Institute which began as a lab for independent filmmakers to develop original projects. The Sundance Institute took over the U.S. Film Festival, renaming it the Sundance Film Festival and turning the festival into the epicenter of American independent filmmaking. Sundance was key in launching the careers of Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Kimberly Peirce, Euzhan Palcy, Paul Thomas Anderson and Kevin Smith.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a 1969 western that starred Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the title roles. The film was an enormous success. It was the highest grossing film of 1969 and it won four Academy Awards including Best Song for “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.” Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a fun movie but with a downbeat ending. It prefigured a lot of the buddy action comedies that would become popular in the ensuing decades.
Robert Redford and Paul Newman reunited in 1973’s The Sting. Set in the Great Depression, Redford and Newman play con-artists who scam a gangster. Much like their earlier collaboration, The Sting was funny and entertaining. It was also a huge success at the box office and a critical darling that won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. The soundtrack album featured period music by Scott Joplin and was part of a revival in ragtime music in the 1970s.
Robert Redford was a popular leading man especially in romantic films. He played Jay Gatsby in the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby and he had roles in Up Close and Personal and Indecent Proposal.
The most significant professional relationship of Robert Redford’s career was his collaboration with filmmaker Sydney Pollack. Redford and Pollack first collaborated on 1966’s This Property is Condemned which costarred Natalie Wood. Redford and Pollack also worked together on 1972’s Jeremiah Johnson. This film has had a strange afterlife. An image of Redford starring into the camera and nodding has become a popular meme. Robert Redford costarred with Barbara Streistand in Sydney Pollack’s 1973’s film The Way We Were and he shared the screen with Jane Fonda in Pollack’s 1979 film The Electric Horseman. Redford also starred in 1975’s Three Days of the Condor, an espionage thriller in which a CIA researcher returns to his office and finds all of his coworkers dead. The 1990 film Havana was a lightly disguised remake of Casablanca and starred Redford as a gambler.
The biggest success of Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford’s collaborations was 1985’s Out of Africa. Redford played a big game hunter in colonial controlled Kenya who has a love affair with a baroness played Meryl Streep. Out of Africa was one of the major prestige dramas of the 1980s and it won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Music.
Robert Redford was involved in several politically themed films, some of them reflecting his own interests and activism. He had the title role in 1972’s The Candidate about an upstart politician running for office against the establishment. He both directed and acted in 2007’s Lions for Lambs which was about the War on Terror. He also directed 2011’s The Conspirator, a historical drama about the trial of Mary Surratt for her part in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. The film was a tight thriller that’s been underappreciated. The Conspirator drew a parallel between the Civil War era and contemporary threats to due process in the rush to defeat terrorism. Redford also directed and acted in 2012’s The Company You Keep which was about the domestic terrorist group The Weather Underground. Truth was a 2015 drama in which Robert Redford played journalist Dan Rather and the Killian documents controversy that ended Rather’s tenure as anchor of the CBS Evening News.
One of the signature films of Robert Redford’s career was 1976’s All the President’s Men in which he played Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward opposite Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein. Based on true events, All the President’s Men was about Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation into the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon.
In addition to his work as an actor, Robert Redford was also an accomplished director. His directing credits include The Milagro Beanfield War, A River Runs Throughout It, Quiz Show, The Horse Whisperer, and The Legend of Bagger Vance. Redford’s biggest success behind the camera was actually his first effort, 1980’s Ordinary People. Based on the novel by Judith Guest, Ordinary People starred Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore as a couple grieving the death of their son. Ordinary People was a hit and Redford won an Academy Award for Best Director.
A few other standout titles in Robert Redford’s career:
1984’s The Natural was directed by Barry Levinson and starred Redford as a middle-aged man who comes out of nowhere to become a baseball superstar.
A Bridge Too Far was a World War II drama directed by Richard Attenborough and featured an ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Ryan O’Neal, Michael Caine, Gene Hackman, and Laurence Olivier.
Redford directed 1994’s Quiz Show, a drama based on the real-life game show scandal that rocked American’s faith in television in the 1950s.
Late in his career, Redford was in two films that are among his best performances. 2018’s The Old Man & the Gun was about a septuagenarian bank robber. And in 2013 Redford starred in All is Lost in which he played a man shipwrecked and trying to survive in a life boat. Redford was the only actor on screen for most of All is Lost and he has almost no dialogue.
Another popular film of Redford’s was 1992’s Sneakers. This was an espionage thriller with a sense of humor and Robert Redford costarred with Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell, Sidney Poitier, and David Strathairn.