Obituary: Robert Redford Dead At The Age Of 89

Robert Redford has died at the age of 89. He was a movie star – an icon.

Normally, I write these obituary pieces by charting the person’s life and their career – you know the score. But this time, I’m not going to. Redford was a star, director and producer for decades – and the man behind the hugely influential Sundance Film Festival (named after his role in the famed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). I’m going to forgo that and give a potted history of how Redford and his films intertwined my life.

My first memory of him on screen was in Barry Levinson’s The Natural. A film I saw on VHS sometime in the mid-1980s. It circles my mind like a dream, a fragment. I haven’t seen it in decades, but I remember moments and images. I couldn’t tell you what it was about (well, baseball), but I remember how it made me feel as a young boy. In my mind, there’s a hazy, soft-focus quality to it – maybe that’s how it was shot, I don’t know, but I intend to find out again soon.

At some point, maybe 1989, I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with my parents. I remember it starting in black and white, and it was probably only midway through the film that I realised it was in colour. I was so caught up in it that I didn’t notice the switch. I remember making note of that, even as a nine-year-old.

By the early 1990s, I remember the poster and cover of Sydney Pollack’s box office bomb Havana cluttering the video shop. I still have one of those posters squirrelled away in the archives. For a movie that was so unsuccessful, I wonder if I have the only one?

I then saw Phil Alden Robinson’s Sneakers – a tech-heist film that really captured my attention. A post-Ghostbusters Dan Aykroyd and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’s River Phoenix might have been my entry points, but it was a film that stuck with me.

Adrian Lyne’s Indecent Proposal was a film that captured the zeitgeist in 1993. It was a hot topic that hit the headlines six years after Lyne’s Fatal Attraction, a year after Basic Instinct, and just before Disclosure and Striptease. I saw it years later, but it’s a film that manages to overcome its notoriety and work as a piece of entertainment. It’s Redford’s charisma that offers the film class. In lesser hands, the whole endeavour may have felt perfunctory.

Up Close and Personal and The Horse Whisperer were films that I rolled my eyes at in the mid-1990s (but I appreciate them now). At this stage, I was into action movies with stars like Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A couple of things happened at this time though. My father introduced me to Three Days of the Condor – a film which enthralled me. Also, my English teacher, the late Patricia Hughes, gave me a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s book was a revelation and it coincided with me catching Redford’s film on television. At this point, I became a fan. Together with my father, we watched Brubaker, The Hot Rock, Barefoot in the Park, All the President’s Men, Legal Eagles, and a rewatch of Butch and Sundance, among others.

I was fascinated by Robert Redford’s relaxed charisma – his coolness. He was always smart but never too smart. He also looked great, but somehow managed to deliver an everyman quality. That is what a movie star does. He also seemed to have a nifty line in blue shirts. I also took notice of that. 

I went to university, entered my 20s, and managed to see Tony Scott’s Spy Game and Rod Lurie’s The Last Castle on the big screen. Those are two seminal Redford works for me. Spy Game (which I once again saw with my dad), in particular, is not only my favourite Redford film but also my favourite Tony Scott film. It riffs on Three Days of the Condor, but also builds on it. The Last Castle, I saw with a friend, and we were both struck by how good Redford still was – and also that he was in great physical shape.

Other films came, but Redford managed to deliver his best acting turn in J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost. It’s an expertly handled survival drama, featuring a masterful, dialogue-free performance by Redford as the sole person onscreen for the film’s 105-minute running time. It’s monumentally criminal that he never won an Academy Award for it. 

Of course, Redford starred in other excellent movies (I’ve seen them and enjoyed them all) but that’s my potted personal history with him as a movie star. It’s how his career fits into my life as a film buff, a cineast, a fan. His work has always resonated with me – going all the way back to The Natural 40 years ago.

I’m deeply saddened by Redford’s death. But I know I’ll always be able to go back and enjoy so many of those great performances, in so many of his wonderful movies.

Robert Redford 1936 – 2025