Robert Redford, the luminous star of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting who later reshaped American film culture as an Oscar-winning director and founder of the Sundance Institute, has died at 89. His publicist confirmed he “passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah—the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” adding that “the family requests privacy.”
A matinee idol who became a creative powerhouse behind the camera, Redford won Best Director for Ordinary People in 1980 and received an honorary Academy Award in 2002. He announced his retirement from acting after The Old Man & the Gun in 2018, though he made a brief on-screen return with a cameo in TV drama Dark Winds, where he served as executive producer.
Born in 1936, Redford broke through on stage in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park before a run of indelible screen roles: All the President’s Men, The Way We Were, Out of Africa and, decades later, a late-career turn in the Marvel universe as Alexander Pierce in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He also directed The Milagro Beanfield War, A River Runs Through It and Quiz Show, the latter earning multiple Oscar nominations.
In 1981, Redford launched the Sundance Institute, which he said was designed to nurture new voices rather than chase celebrity. It became a proving ground for generations of filmmakers, sending films like Reservoir Dogs, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, The Blair Witch Project, Little Miss Sunshine and CODA into the cultural mainstream.
Redford was twice married—first to producer Lola Van Wagenen from 1958 to 1985, with whom he had four children (Scott, Shauna, James and Amy), and then to artist-environmentalist Sibylle Szaggars, whom he wed in 2009. Reflecting on the start of their relationship, he said it “began as two human beings meeting each other and finding a connection… rather than being coloured by success.”
He also spoke candidly about childhood challenges, recalling “a case of mild polio” that left him bedridden for two weeks and teenage bullying that, as he put it, forced him to “toughen up fast if only for survival.”
On screen, Redford’s charisma belied a fierce sense of control over his craft—nowhere more visible than on The Way We Were, where he reportedly warned director Sydney Pollack that Barbra Streisand’s “controlling” reputation might clash with his style. He even joked about boundaries during their love scenes, once quipping concerns like, “She’s not going to sing, is she?” Yet the film was a smash, proof that combustible chemistry can still light up the box office.
For many, Redford embodied American moviemaking at its most romantic and most independent: a face that filled screens and a mind that carved out a future for artists who didn’t yet have one. He will be remembered as the rare figure who changed both the movies we watched—and the way they could be made.
