Memorial Page for Robert Redford (née Charles Robert Redford)

Robert Redford (born 18 August 1936 in Santa Monica, California; died 16 September 2025 in Sundance, Utah) was an American actor, director and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. As a film star of the 1970s, he shaped American cinema with roles in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting; as a director and institution-builder, he became one of the most influential figures in independent film.

From art studies to acting

After a baseball scholarship at the University of Colorado fell through, Redford worked for a time in the oil fields and travelled to Europe, where he studied painting in Paris and Florence and supported himself as a street artist. He returned to the United States in 1958, studied theatre design at the Pratt Institute in New York, and discovered his passion for acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. On 9 August 1958 he married Lola Van Wagenen in Las Vegas; the marriage produced four children, of whom the first son, Scott, died at a few months old.

Breakthrough and the great films of the 1970s

Following his film debut in 1962, Redford achieved his breakthrough in 1967 with Barefoot in the Park. In 1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, alongside Paul Newman, made him an internationally known film star; his role as the Sundance Kid later gave his film festival its name. In 1973 came The Sting, again with Newman and directed by George Roy Hill, earning him his only Academy Award nomination for acting. Between 1973 and 1976 Redford was considered the most bankable film star in the United States.

Directing and Sundance

In 1980 Redford made his directorial debut with Ordinary People and won the Academy Award for Best Director at the 1981 ceremony; the film also won Best Picture. That same year he founded the Sundance Institute in Utah, from which the Sundance Film Festival emerged in 1984 – today the leading gathering place for American independent film. In total, Redford directed nine feature films, including The Horse Whisperer (1998).

Environmental work and later years

Alongside film and festival, Redford spent decades campaigning for environmental protection, including as an adviser to the marine conservation organisation Sea Shepherd and as a producer of ocean-conservation documentary films. In 2002 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his life's work, followed by honours including the Kennedy Prize (2005) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016). From 1996 he was in a relationship with the German painter Sibylle Szaggars; the two married in Hamburg on 11 July 2009.

Robert Redford died on 16 September 2025, aged 89, in his sleep at his home in Sundance, Utah, and was buried on his property there. His legacy extends beyond his own filmography: with Sundance, he built an institution that gave generations of independent filmmakers a stage that had not existed before him.