Redford achieved enormous critical and commercial success in the 1960s and 1970s with a string of hits like “Butch Cassidy” before becoming an Oscar-winning director.

Robert Redford, the handsome Oscar-winning actor and director, has died, according to his publicist, Cindi Berger, president and CEO of Rogers and Cowan PMK. He was 89.

“Robert Redford passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home in Sundance, in the mountains of Utah, the place he loved, surrounded by his loved ones. He will be greatly missed,” Berger said in a statement to CNN.

“The family requests privacy.”

Known for his starring roles in “Butch Cassidy” and “All the President’s Men,” Redford also directed award-winning films such as “Ordinary People” and “A River Runs Through It.”

His passion for the art of cinema led him to create the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit organization that supports independent film and theater and is known for its annual Sundance Film Festival.

Redford was also a committed environmentalist, moving to Utah in 1961 and leading efforts to preserve the state’s natural landscape and the American West.

Redford continued acting well into his old age, reuniting with Jane Fonda in the 2017 Netflix film “Us at Night.”

The following year, he starred in “The Old Man & the Gun” at age 82, a film he said would be his last, at which point he decided to retire.

Robert Redford was an iconic actor of classic and modern Hollywood.

Born Charles Robert Redford in 1936, he grew up in Los Angeles and, after being expelled from the University of Colorado, studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

After playing a series of small roles in television, theater, and film, he began to make his mark in the early 1960s, earning an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1962 for “The Voice of Charlie Pont” and landing a starring role in the original 1963 Broadway production of Neil Simon’s hit play “Barefoot in the Park.”

Redford’s big break in film came in 1965 with a standout role as a bisexual movie star in “The Rebel,” alongside Natalie Wood, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe.

Following a string of solid Hollywood films, including “The Pack” and a film adaptation of “Barefoot in the Park,” Redford scored a major hit with the 1969 western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” in which he co-starred with Paul Newman and Katharine Ross.

The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, though none went to the actors.

Redford starred in “The Valley of the Fugitive,” the first film directed in over 20 years by former blacklister Abraham Polonsky, and then a string of key 1970s hits: the frontier western “Jeremiah Johnson” (1972), the period romance “The Way We Were” (1973), opposite Barbra Streisand, the crime comedy “The Sting” (1973), again opposite Newman, and the literary adaptation “The Great Gatsby” (1974). Redford followed with the conspiracy thriller “Three Days of the Condor” (1975) and the Watergate drama “All the President’s Men” (1976), co-starring Dustin Hoffman.

After a long hiatus from his acting career in the late 1970s, Redford turned to directing with the ensemble drama “Ordinary People,” adapted from the novel by Judith Guest.

The film was a huge success and won four Oscars in 1981, including Best Picture and Best Director for Redford, an award he had never received for his acting work.

His acting success continued into the 1980s and 1990s, although perhaps with less impact than his work in the 1970s.

The baseball drama “The Greatest,” adapted from a 1984 Bernard Malamud novel, was followed by “Out of Africa” ​​in 1985, in which he played hunter Denys Finch Hatton alongside Meryl Streep, who played a Danish aristocrat.

He returned to directing with “A Place Called Miracle” in 1988 and “A River Runs Through It” in 1992, both films that addressed rural America in different ways.

A year later, he made what, in retrospect, was a turning point: a purely Hollywood project, the erotic thriller “Indecent Proposal,” in which his character, a businessman, offers Demi Moore a million dollars in exchange for sleeping with her. The film reaffirmed Redford’s status as a commercial force.

Later, in the 1990s, he directed “Quiz Show” and “The Horse Whisperer” (the latter also starring him).

It was during this period that the Sundance Film Festival—which Redford’s production company had co-founded in 1978 as the Utah Film Festival—began to become a major international film festival. The Sundance Institute, which was renamed the Sundance Institute in Redford’s honor in 1984, began to

exerted its influence as a showcase for American independent cinema, promoting figures such as Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and Kevin Smith.

Its impact only increased in the following decades as a forum for boosting films’ commercial potential and garnering awards recognition.

In 2014, Redford joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Hydra leader Alexander Pierce in ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’.

At the time, he stated, “I wanted to experience this new way of making films that has emerged, where cartoon characters are brought to life using high technology.”

He made a cameo in the same role in ‘Avengers: Endgame’ in 2019.

Robert Redford’s Retirement

In the mid-2010s, Redford scaled back his work, handed over his directorship of the Sundance Film Festival, and announced his retirement from acting. His last major role was in the 2018 crime drama “The Old Man & the Gun,” directed by David Lowery.

Redford received an Honorary Oscar in 2002, a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival in 2017, and an Honorary César in 2019.

He was also named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 2010, and in 2016 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.

Redford was married twice: to historian Lola Van Wagenen from 1958 to 1985, with whom he had four children, and to artist Sibylle Szaggars in 2009.

Ignacio is a cultural expert, but for more than 10 years he has specialized in films and series, both those released on the big screen and on streaming platforms.

He’ll tell you about new releases on Netflix, HBO Max, or Amazon Prime Video, just as he’ll give you the latest on ‘Masterchef’ or any other TV show.

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He likes everything: he follows great directors like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Steven Spielberg, and he knows the entire Marvel universe, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Disney by heart.

Culture is his main hobby, and although he considers himself a cinephile, he also loves music, especially international music, and video games, to which he dedicates all the time he has left while watching films and series.

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Ignacio Herruzo graduated in Journalism from the Rey Juan Carlos University in 2012.

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