Robert Redford Dead: Oscar-Winning Hollywood Icon and ‘All the President’s Men’ Star Dies in His Sleep Aged 89 at His Utah Home

Robert Redford — the two-time Academy Award winner who won hearts in films like “The Way We Were” and “Barefoot in the Park,” directed acclaimed dramas including “Ordinary People” and “Quiz Show”, and launched the Sundance Institute to champion independent film — has died at the age of 89.

With his signature strawberry-blond hair and timeless, boyish good looks, Redford became one of Hollywood’s most beloved figures in the 1970s. Over a career that stretched more than 60 years, he not only won an Academy Award but also won as many as five Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, the Kennedy Center Honors, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Death of an Icon

Redford died peacefully in his sleep on Tuesday at his home in Utah, just outside Provo, according to The New York Times. His death was confirmed by Cindi Berger, CEO of the publicity firm Rogers & Cowan PMK.

Some of Redford’s most iconic performances came in classics like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969), “The Sting” (1973), “All the President’s Men” (1976), “The Natural” (1984), and “Out of Africa” (1985).

“The idea of being an actor was to have a sense of freedom. You were free to be, to act as someone else, if you were paying attention to the people around you,” Redford told Collider in 2019.

“You had a chance to be an artist, because acting is an art form. You had a chance to say, ‘I know this person, I’ve seen this person before and I want to bring that forward.'”

Born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on August 18, 1936, he grew up in Southern California.

As a kid, he was athletic — playing football and tennis, and also running track. His father, Charles, worked as an accountant for an oil company, while his mother, Martha, loved books and the arts.

Still, Redford admitted he had a hard time figuring out his own direction in life. “I was a failure at everything I tried. I worked as a box boy at a supermarket and got fired. Then my dad got me a job at Standard Oil — fired again,” he told Success magazine back in 1980.

Rising to Stardom

Redford finished high school in 1954 and went on to briefly attend the University of Colorado in Boulder. A year later, in 1955, tragedy struck when his mother died from septicemia, a bacterial infection in the blood. He was only 18 at the time.

Not long after, he left for Europe, where he devoted himself to becoming an artist. “I was increasing my skill set and exploring storytelling through painting. Doing that, I realized how much I loved it,” he told his grandson, producer-director Dylan Redford, in a 2016 interview.

“Later, when I became an actor, I suffered for four or five years not being sure I wanted to be in that business because I so wanted to be an artist. I just wanted to paint and sketch and tell stories by drawing.”

Eventually, he returned to New York City, where he studied at the Pratt Institute and later at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Redford made his Broadway debut in 1959 with Tall Story. Just a few years later, in 1963, he landed his breakout stage role as Paul Bratter, a straight-laced lawyer and newlywed, in Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park.”

He reprised that role in the 1967 film adaptation, starring opposite Jane Fonda — one of his most frequent co-stars. Redford had already made his film debut in the movie version of “Tall Story” (1960), also with Fonda, and the two went on to appear together in “The Chase” (1966) and “The Electric Horseman” (1979).

Over the years, Redford shared the screen with many of Hollywood’s leading ladies, including Barbra Streisand, Faye Dunaway, Meryl Streep, Michelle Pfeiffer, Debra Winger, and Natalie Wood.

When it came to “The Way We Were”, however, Redford was hesitant. He wasn’t keen on being paired with Streisand, who he thought had a “controlling” reputation. According to Robert Hofler’s 2023 book The Way They Were: How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen, Redford even warned director Sydney Pollack: “She will direct herself. It’ll never work.”

The production itself was rocky — the stars had very different acting styles, the script went through constant changes, and neither Streisand nor Redford liked rehearsing. Still, when the film finally hit theaters in 1973, it became a major commercial success, winning two Oscars and earning Streisand a nomination for Best Actress.

Redford stayed incredibly busy through the 1960s and ’70s, building the foundation of his legendary career.

“When I was young, I said to myself, ‘You’ve got to make the most of your life.’ It’s all about taking risks,” Redford told Esquire UK in 2017. “Push yourself to do as much exploration as possible. Find yourself. Because sometimes we think we’ve found ourselves, but it’s only part of ourselves we’ve found.”

He won the Golden Globe for Best New Star for his role in “Inside Daisy Clover” (1965) opposite Natalie Wood, and soon after became a true leading man with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, starring alongside Paul Newman.

The two actors teamed up again for “The Sting” (1973), playing slick con artists in what would become the biggest hit of Redford’s career. The performance earned him his first — and only — Best Actor Oscar nomination. (He later received an honorary Academy Award in 2002.)

Redford’s streak of success continued throughout the ’70s with standout roles: a privileged political upstart in “The Candidate” (1972), the enigmatic Jay Gatsby in “The Great Gatsby” (1974), and Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in “All the President’s Men” (1976), the acclaimed retelling of the Watergate scandal.

Audiences around the world loved him — he won the Golden Globe for Favorite World Film Star three times, in 1975, 1977, and 1978.