THE WASHINGTON POST – Robert Redford, an actor whose beach-god looks and subtle magnetism in films such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men” made him one of the biggest movie stars of all time, but who forged an even more profound legacy in cinema as a patron saint of American independent film, died Sept. 16 at his home near Provo, Utah. He was 89.
Since 1981, Mr. Redford had been president and founder of the Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah. He said his arts colony was not about “insurgents coming down from the mountain to attack the mainstream” but about broadening the very concept of mainstream.
Sundance provided a vital platform for two generations of outside-the-system filmmakers — from Quentin Tarantino to Ava DuVernay — who were embraced by ticketbuyers and studios and helped enlarge the definition of commercial fare in a risk-averse industry.
Mr. Redford and Mia Farrow in “The Great Gatsby” from 1974. (Everett Collection)
This might have seemed an unlikely quest for Mr. Redford, whose square jaw, blue eyes and sun-dappled hair projected an almost blinding beauty that made him a Hollywood sex symbol for five decades.
He became one of the most popular and highly paid actors in the world, his audiences reveling in his romantic chemistry with Meryl Streep and Barbra Streisand and his bromantic banter with Paul Newman and Dustin Hoffman.
From an inauspicious upbringing — he ran with suburban gangs and drank his way out of college before finding focus in the adrenaline rush of acting — Mr. Redford also achieved success as a producer, Oscar-winning director, environmental activist and entrepreneur.
Privately, he nursed a temperament that could be mercurial, aloof and in harmony with what Alan J. Pakula, director of “All the President’s Men,” once called a “rebel heart” beating under his glossy surface …
