For decades, Robert Redford seemed to represent a particular kind of Hollywood star that barely exists anymore.
The blond hair. The quiet confidence. The smile audiences recognized immediately.
He was the Sundance Kid opposite Paul Newman. He was Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men. He shared the screen with Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were and Meryl Streep in Out of Africa.
But when Robert Redford died on September 16, 2025, at 89, the tributes weren’t only about the movie star audiences had watched for more than half a century.
Redford died in his sleep at his home in Sundance, Utah — surrounded by the landscape and people he loved. No specific cause of death was publicly announced. (AP News)
And looking back at photographs from his early years reveals something remarkable.
Long before he became one of Hollywood’s most recognizable faces, Redford’s path was anything but certain.
Before Hollywood, there was a California boy with very different plans
Charles Robert Redford Jr. was born August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California.
As a young man, acting wasn’t necessarily the obvious destination.
He attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship, and he was deeply interested in drawing and painting.
Eventually, however, his life began moving toward performance.
He studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began appearing on Broadway and television during the late 1950s and early ’60s.
Audiences could spot the young Redford on programs including The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Untouchables. (AP News)
Then Hollywood noticed him
Redford’s looks certainly didn’t hurt.
But they occasionally created an unexpected problem.
Director Mike Nichols once considered him for the role of Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate — the part that eventually went to Dustin Hoffman.
There was just one problem.
Nichols couldn’t believe audiences would accept Robert Redford as a young man who struggled with women.
During a later recollection of the casting process, Nichols said he asked Redford whether he had ever struck out with a girl.
Redford apparently didn’t even understand the question.
Nichols decided he wasn’t right for the role. (AP News)
Missing The Graduate hardly damaged his career.
Something much bigger was coming.
The Sundance Kid changed everything
In 1969, Redford appeared alongside Paul Newman in ** Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.**
The chemistry worked immediately.
Newman was already a major star. Redford was still climbing.
Together, they became one of cinema’s most beloved screen pairings.
The movie was a huge success and transformed Redford into a genuine Hollywood leading man. (AP News)
Four years later, Redford and Newman reunited for The Sting.
That film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, while Redford received his only competitive Oscar nomination for acting.
Their friendship extended well beyond the screen.
For audiences who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s, the two men became almost inseparable in popular memory.
Then came one classic after another
Redford’s 1970s filmography reads like a list of movies that defined an era.
The Candidate.
The Way We Were.
The Sting.
Three Days of the Condor.
All the President’s Men.
In The Way We Were, his pairing with Barbra Streisand became one of the era’s memorable screen romances.
In All the President’s Men, Redford played Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward opposite Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein, dramatizing the Watergate investigation that helped bring down President Richard Nixon.
By then, Redford was far more than Hollywood’s handsome blond leading man.
He was choosing movies about politics, power, journalism and American institutions.
But his biggest surprise was still ahead.
His first movie as a director won Best Picture
In 1980, Redford stepped behind the camera for ** Ordinary People.**
It was his directorial debut.
The intimate family drama starred Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton.
At the Academy Awards, Ordinary People won Best Picture, while Redford won Best Director.
His first attempt at directing had produced Hollywood’s highest honor. (AP News)
Redford later directed films including A River Runs Through It, The Horse Whisperer and Quiz Show, the latter earning him another Best Director nomination.
Yet even an Oscar wasn’t ultimately his most influential contribution to filmmaking.
He took the name “Sundance” and turned it into something much bigger
Redford had fallen in love with Utah decades earlier.
During a cross-country motorcycle trip in 1961, he discovered the landscape around Provo Canyon and purchased two acres.
As his career became successful, he acquired additional land.
Eventually, he named the area Sundance, after the character who had helped make him famous. (AP News)
But Redford didn’t want Sundance to become merely another Hollywood playground.
He wanted somewhere independent filmmakers could experiment without the pressure of the major studios.
In 1981, he founded the nonprofit Sundance Institute.
The Sundance Film Festival ultimately became one of the most influential institutions in independent cinema.
Look at the filmmakers who came through Sundance
The list is extraordinary.
Steven Soderbergh.
Quentin Tarantino.
Paul Thomas Anderson.
Ava DuVernay.
Ryan Coogler.
Chloé Zhao.
Taika Waititi.
Darren Aronofsky.
And many others received crucial exposure or support through the institution Redford helped build. (AP News)
Movies including Get Out, Whiplash, Little Miss Sunshine, Memento, Before Sunrise and CODA would all become part of Sundance’s history.
The handsome Hollywood star had become the man helping outsiders get inside.
That may ultimately be as important to film history as any movie Redford made himself.
He never completely abandoned acting
Even while Sundance consumed more of his attention, Redford continued appearing on screen.
He starred opposite Meryl Streep in the Oscar-winning Out of Africa in 1985.
Decades later, at an age when many actors had already retired, he delivered one of his most acclaimed performances in 2013’s All Is Lost.
The film was an extraordinary challenge.
Redford essentially carried it alone.
At 77, he played a sailor stranded at sea with almost no dialogue.
Then came The Old Man & the Gun in 2018, which Redford described at the time as his likely farewell to acting. (AP News)
His life away from the camera wasn’t without heartbreak
Behind the extraordinary career were painful losses.
Redford was the father of four children.
His son Scott died in infancy in 1959.
Decades later, another son, filmmaker and activist James Redford, died in 2020.
Two of Redford’s four children predeceased him. (AP News)
Redford was married twice. At the time of his death, he was married to artist Sibylle Szaggars.
For a man whose face had been recognized around the world for decades, he increasingly preferred the mountains of Utah to Hollywood.
And that was where his life eventually ended.
Hollywood said goodbye
When Redford’s death was announced, tributes arrived from across generations.
Jane Fonda, his longtime friend and frequent co-star, said the news hit her hard and remembered his commitment to environmental protection.
Barbra Streisand recalled their work together.
Leonardo DiCaprio highlighted Redford’s environmental activism.
Directors and actors who had benefited from Sundance remembered something different: a man who used his enormous success to give other storytellers a chance. (AP News)
Outside the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, Utah, the marquee carried a simple farewell:
“Applause for Bob Redford! Thank you Sundance Kid!” (AP News)
The young man in those old photographs had no idea what was coming
That’s what makes looking back at Robert Redford’s early photographs so fascinating.
Before Butch Cassidy.
Before Paul Newman.
Before The Sting.
Before the Oscar.
Before Sundance became a word recognized throughout the film industry.
There was simply a young California man trying to figure out where he belonged.
He became one of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars — and then used that power to build a place for filmmakers who might otherwise never have become movie stars or directors themselves.
Robert Redford died at 89.
But Sundance remains.
The movies remain.
And so does the image millions remember: that unmistakable blond-haired young man on a movie screen, riding alongside Paul Newman into Hollywood history. (AP News)
For more stories about beloved figures, learn about the man behind the legendary voice of Optimus Prime, Peter Cullen, or revisit the incredible story of how Dolly Parton’s streams exploded and her enduring love story with Carl Dean.
