Robert Redford, Hollywood icon and star of ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘Butch Cassidy’, dies at 89
The menswear style icon passed away on September 17
ROBERT REDFORD, the Oscar-winning actor, director and founder of the Sundance Film Festival, has died at his home in Utah. He was 89.
Redford was one of Hollywood’s most recognisable figures, with a career that spanned six decades and reshaped American cinema. His breakout came in 1969 as the Sundance Kid in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a role that not only gave him enduring stardom but later lent its name to the independent film institute he would establish. In the 1970s, he was at the centre of the decade’s defining films – The Way We Were with starred Barbara Streisand, The Sting, Three Days of the Condor and All the President’s Men. A decade of performances that made him the number one box office draw for three consecutive years.
Beyond his acting, Redford’s influence over how men looked onscreen would trickle down into the real world. His portrayal of Jay Gatsby in the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby cemented him as a style icon. The cream-coloured suits, effortless tailoring and restrained elegance became shorthand for a new kind of masculine suavity that is still referenced in fashion today.
Redford won the Academy Award for Best Director in 1981 with Ordinary People, proving his talent extended behind the camera. At a moment when he could have relied on his fame, he instead turned to nurturing the next generation of storytellers. In 1981, he founded the Sundance Film Institute in Utah, which quickly grew into the Sundance Film Festival – the premier showcase for independent cinema in the United States. Careers from Quentin Tarantino to Chloé Zhao owe their start to the ecosystem Redford created.
Through the 1980s and ’90s, Redford’s screen roles matured with him: The Natural, Out of Africa and Indecent Proposal revealed a star willing to interrogate the contradictions of charm and power. In later years he returned for acclaimed roles in The Old Man & the Gun (2018) and Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame (2019), a reminder of his enduring screen presence.
Redford’s influence on cinema is twofold: he was both one of Hollywood’s most bankable leading men but also a patron of risk-taking filmmakers outside the studio system. A true cinephile that saw the medium as one of the highest forms of storytelling before “celebrity” became the default.
His death in Utah closes a chapter in film history, but his legacy as an actor, director, activist and architect of modern independent film endures.
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