Robert Redford, Screen Idol Turned Director and Activist, Dies at 89 [View all]

Source: New York Times


Robert Redford in 2013. With a distaste for Hollywood’s dumb-it-down approach to moviemaking, he typically demanded that his films carry cultural weight.Credit...Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times


Sept. 16, 2025


Robert Redford, the big-screen charmer turned Oscar-winning director whose hit movies often helped America make sense of itself and who, off screen, evangelized for environmental causes and fostered the Sundance-centered independent film movement, died early Tuesday morning at his home in Utah. He was 89.

His death, in the mountains outside Provo, was announced in a statement by Cindi Berger, the chief executive of the publicity firm Rogers & Cowan PMK. She said he had died in his sleep but did not provide a specific cause.

With a distaste for Hollywood's dumb-it-down approach to moviemaking, Mr. Redford typically demanded that his films carry cultural weight, in many cases making serious topics like grief and political corruption resonate with audiences, in no small part because of his immense star power.

As an actor, his biggest films included "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969), with its loving look at rogues in a dying West, and "All the President's Men" (1976), about the journalistic pursuit of President Richard M. Nixon in the Watergate era. In "Three Days of the Condor" (1975) he was an introverted C.I.A. codebreaker caught in a murderous cat-and-mouse game. "The Sting" (1973), about Depression-era grifters, gave Mr. Redford his first and only Oscar nomination as an actor.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/movies/robert-redford-dead.html