Robert Redford Courtesy of Photofest Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Robert Redford, the Hollywood golden boy and Sundance Film Festival founder who starred in such movies as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Way We Were and All the President's Men - and who won an Academy Award for directing Ordinary People - died Tuesday. He was 89. Redford died in his sleep at his home outside Provo, Utah, his longtime publicist, Cindi Berger, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. The actor-producer-director, a four-time Academy Award nominee and honorary Oscar recipient, was one of the few truly iconic screen figures of the past half-century, the avatar of a certain kind of all-American ideal who nonetheless took a dyspeptic view of his country in several notable dramas including Downhill Racer (1969), The Candidate (1972), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and All the President's Men (1976). Related Stories Movies Paula Shaw, Actress in 'Freddy vs. Jason' and Hallmark Holiday Telefilms, Dies at 84 TV Patricia Crowley, Star of TV's 'Please Don't Eat the Daisies,' Dies at 91 He brought his good looks, ineffable charm and romantic appeal to heroes as well as antiheroes, from one of the outlaws in Sundance Kid to the Nixon-toppling journalist Bob Woodward in All the President's Men to the well-meaning but naive political contender Bill McKay in Candidate. His sheen often contrasted with the jaundiced view of his pictures, particularly in the '70s films that remain among his best; but he could use his appeal to equal and devastating effect in romance, notably opposite Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were (1973). Behind the California-kid surface was a darker and more complicated figure. The very definition of a Hollywood star, he nonetheless saw himself as an outsider and spent much of his time living away from the epicenters of the industry - including at the Utah skiing resort that he turned into the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival. He bestrode two worlds, his biographer, Michael Feeney Callan, wrote in 2011: "His life [was] peripatetic. He engaged [in] careers on the East Coast and West. It may not be a coincidence that his arts laboratory - his 'great experiment' [Sundance] is not too many miles from Promontory Summit, where, in 1869, the golden spike was hammered that joined the East Coast and West on the transcontinental railroad." Born in Santa Monica on Aug. 18, 1936, Charles Robert Redford Jr. grew up poor in a heavily immigrant part of town, his family scraping by on the earnings of his father, a risk-averse milkman who later became an accountant. "[He] worked brutal hours," Redford, an only child, remembered in a 2014 interview with THR. "I didn't see much of him when I was a kid." His mother, Martha, a homemaker, "was the strong member of the family. She was very outgoing. She always had a smile; she was very, very adventurous. Risk was not a big issue for her. She came from Texas, and she carried that kind of robust, jocular goodwill. She saw things in a positive light. She also felt that I could do anything, and she was very supportive of anything I might try." Redford rebelled against his father's cautiousness and indeed against all expectations, even after the family moved to the more upscale Van Nuys. "I was always about breaking the rules," he said. "I wanted to be away from Los Angeles because I felt it was going to the dogs. I was just getting more and more anxious about wanting out. I didn't want to be wherever I was. And I felt a certain suffocation. I felt things were closing in around me, and it made me anxious. I wanted to be free." His dream was to follow in the footsteps of the great artists who had made Paris their hub; he didn't consider a career as an actor until later, after dropping out of the University of Colorado following his mother's death in 1955, when he took months off to travel around Europe. He was deeply affected by his experiences in Spain, Italy and France. "It was the first time I developed any kind of a political view," he said, "because I couldn't care less about politics when I was growing up." He became a passionate environmentalist and supporter of Native American and LGBTQ rights and remained that way throughout his life. In 2018, he published on the Sundance website a lament about the state of America titled, "A Brief Statement About Big Things." "Tonight," he complained, following the news of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court, "for the first time I can remember, I feel out of place in the country I was born into and the citizenship I've loved my whole life." After returning to the U.S., he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and then found work in theater and television. He became a young father and had four children with his first wife, Lola