Robert Redford, a two-time Oscar winner who captivated audiences with “The Way We Were” and “Barefoot in the Park,” directed acclaimed dramas such as “Ordinary People” and “Quiz Show,” and founded the Sundance Institute to champion independent storytelling, has died at 89.
“Robert Redford passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home in Sundance, Utah — the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” Rogers & Cowan PMK CEO Cindi Berger told The Post in a statement. “He will be missed greatly. The family requests privacy.”
Berger also told The New York Times that Redford died in his sleep. No cause of death was provided.
Known for his strawberry-blond hair and boyish charm, Robert Redford enjoyed a Hollywood career spanning more than six decades, earning five Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, Kennedy Center Honors, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Some of his most iconic roles include “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,” Robert 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, the acclaimed actor and director grew up in Southern California.
Robert Redford filming Three Days of the Condor in 1970.
Redford was a sportsman in his youth, playing football and tennis and running track. His father, Charles, worked as an oil company accountant, while his mother, Martha, had a deep love for literature and the arts.
He struggled to find his own path.
“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 in 1980, reflecting on his teenage work experiences.
Robert Redford on the set of Inside Daisy Clover in 1965.
Redford graduated from high school in 1954 and briefly attended the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Tragedy struck in 1955 when his mother, Martha, died of septicemia — a bacterial infection in the bloodstream. He was just 18 years old.
Shortly afterward, he traveled to Europe, immersing himself in art and honing his creative ambitions.
Redford and Barbra Streisand portrayed lovers from opposite sides of the tracks in The Way We Were.
“I was increasing my skill set and exploring storytelling through painting. Doing that, I realized how much I loved it,” Redford 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.”
He eventually returned to the U.S. to study in New York City at the Pratt Institute and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Robert Redford and Jane Fonda remained friends and frequent collaborators over the decades, starring together in Tall Story (1960), The Chase (1966), and the 1967 romantic comedy Barefoot in the Park.
Redford made his Broadway debut in Tall Story in 1959. He went on to play the role of conservative lawyer-turned-newlywed Paul Bratter in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park in 1963.
He later reprised the role in the 1967 film adaptation, starring opposite Jane Fonda, one of his most enduring co-stars.
Robert Redford and Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park.
Redford made his film debut in the adaptation of Tall Story (1960), starring Fonda. The duo also appeared together in The Chase (1966) and The Electric Horseman (1979).
Over the years, Redford shared the screen with a remarkable roster of actresses, including Barbra Streisand, Faye Dunaway, Meryl Streep, Michelle Pfeiffer, Debra Winger, and Natalie Wood.
Interestingly, he was initially hesitant to be paired with Streisand in The Way We Were, believing the Funny Girl star had a somewhat “controlling” reputation.
The Way We Were premiered in 1973 and is considered one of the greatest romantic films of all time.
In his 2023 book The Way They Were: How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen, Robert Hofler reported that Redford told director Sydney Pollack, “She will direct herself. It’ll never work.”
The film nearly didn’t get made. Redford and Streisand had clashing acting styles, scripts were frequently revised, and the actors often resisted rehearsals.
Despite the challenges, the movie premiered to commercial success, winning two Oscars and earning Streisand a nomination for Best Actress.
Redford was initially reluctant to star alongside the Woman in Love singer in The Way We Were.
He was, however, incredibly prolific throughout the 1960s and ’70s.
“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 Inside Daisy Clover (1965), starring alongside Natalie Wood, and cemented his status as a leading man with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid opposite Paul Newman.
Robert Redford, Katharine Ross, and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Redford and Newman reunited as conniving grifters in the crime drama The Sting, which became the biggest hit of Redford’s career. He received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for the role—his first and only in that category—and later won an honorary Academy Award in 2002.
In the 1970s, Redford found further success portraying a political nepo baby in The Candidate (1972), Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (1974), and Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in the Watergate drama All the President’s Men.
He won the Golden Globe for Favorite World Film Star in 1975, 1977, and 1978.
Redford starred in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park on Broadway in 1963 and reprised the role in the 1967 film adaptation opposite Jane Fonda.
He ventured into directing with Ordinary People in 1980, an emotional family drama that won four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture.
Four years later, he played Roy Hobbs in The Natural, widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball movies ever made. He also starred as Meryl Streep’s character’s lover in Out of Africa, which won seven Oscars.
Robert Redford and Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park.
Redford continued his heartthrob roles in the 1990s with Indecent Proposal (1993) and Up Close & Personal (1996).
He also directed several notable films: A River Runs Through It (1992) starring Brad Pitt; Quiz Show (1994), which earned four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director; The Horse Whisperer (1998), in which he also starred; and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), featuring Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2008, Redford reflected on his career, saying, “If something were to impress or satisfy me most, it is having made films that I was told couldn’t be made. That was very satisfying for me.”
He later reunited with his Horse Whisperer co-star Scarlett Johansson in Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), playing the villain Alexander Pierce.
Robert Redford and Chris Evans in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. ©Walt Disney Co
When asked what drew him to the role, Redford told the Los Angeles Times in 2013 that it was a departure from his usual work.
“I wanted to experience this new form of filmmaking that’s taken over, where you have kind of cartoon characters brought to life through high technology,” he explained.
He reunited with Jane Fonda in the Netflix film Our Souls at Night (2017).
In August 2018, Redford announced his retirement from acting, with The Old Man & The Gun serving as his final project. At the time, he reflected, “I can’t last forever, and I put my soul and heart into it over the years.”
Robert Redford accepts an honorary Oscar at the 2022 Academy Awards.
Reflecting on his decision to retire, Redford told the Telluride Film Festival about his final western film, The Old Man & The Gun:
“I thought, ‘That’s enough. Why don’t you quit while you’re a little bit ahead? Don’t wait for the bell to toll. Just get out.’ So I felt my time had come and I couldn’t think of a better project to go out on than this film.”
A month later, however, he admitted he regretted announcing his retirement. “I think it was a mistake to say that I was retiring because you never know,” he told People in September 2018. “It did feel like it was time maybe, to concentrate on another category.”
In March 2025, Redford returned to acting after a six-year hiatus, starring in AMC’s Dark Winds, a crime drama set in the 1970s about Navajo Tribal Police officers.
Robert Redford in Dark Winds.
Redford made a cameo in the Season 3 premiere alongside Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. Both also served as executive producers on the project.
According to Vulture, Redford requested that their scene be shot on a closed set.
“He was adamant that — I remember distinctly him saying, ‘Whatever Chris wants,’” episode director Chris Eyre told The Post about Redford’s rare taping. “As we said, ‘How do you want this, and how should we do this?’ [Redford] just kept saying, ‘Whatever Chris wants.’”
Eyre added, “He has always been generous. I think what he wanted was to give me that right as a director and a filmmaker.”
Redford’s voice has also appeared in subsequent projects, including his grandson Dylan’s Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia (2020) and White House Plumbers (2022), a satirical drama about Watergate.
Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were.
Offscreen, Redford founded the Sundance Institute and became the face of the Sundance Film Festival, a celebration of independent cinema.
“Call it masochistic, but I don’t accept failure easily. And I’m very competitive. The good thing about Sundance is that I’m competing for what I consider to be a higher purpose: making the world safe for artistic diversity,” Redford told Harvard Business Review in 2002.
He added, “If you want to bring about real, sustained change, you have to be constantly aware that you are not just taking care of yourself.”
The star-studded annual festival in Park City, Utah, was launched in 1978 by Sterling Van Wagenen, then head of Redford’s production company, Wildwood.
The screen icon retired from acting in 2018.
Redford married Lola Van Wagenen, Sterling Van Wagenen’s cousin, in 1958. The couple had four children together. Their eldest son, Scott, died in 1959 at just two months old from sudden infant death syndrome. They later welcomed Shauna (1960), David James (1962), and Amy (1970) before divorcing in 1985.
In 2009, Redford married his second wife, Sibylle Szaggars.
Robert Redford and Sibylle Szaggars attend The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation’s 2021 award ceremony.
Redford’s son David, who went by James, died in 2020 at age 58 after a battle with liver cancer.
“The grief is immeasurable with the loss of a child,” Redford told Page Six at the time.
James and his father co-founded the Redford Center, an organization dedicated to “using impact-driven film and media to accelerate environmental and climate justice, solutions, and repair.”
Robert Redford with his second wife, Sibylle Szaggars, in Madrid, Spain, in 2012.
Redford had long been an environmental activist, joining the Natural Resources Defense Council as a trustee in 1975.
“I was attending a conference in Denver in 1989, where two scientists explained that Earth’s temperatures were rising — they called it global warming. They detailed what would happen if we ignored this threat,” Redford recalled to Rolling Stone in 2021.
“That moment was my wake-up call. I knew they were speaking the truth. Because one thing we’ve learned is that time waits for no one. I realized that when there’s something you have to do, you better act, and act quickly.”
Demi Moore and Robert Redford in Indecent Proposal (1993).
Redford had the distinct honor of meeting Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2019.
He had long praised the pope’s advocacy on climate change, writing an essay for MSNBC in 2015 in which he described the pontiff as someone who finally “moved” the “needle.”
“The pontiff’s timely message of more dialogue and less discord, respect for life in all of its stages, and a call to protect our common home was irrepressible and impossible to ignore,” Redford wrote. “Sometimes you need a friend to tell you the truth.
“It took someone from outside the U.S. to come and remind us who we are — and who we are supposed to be,” he added.
In 1985, Meryl Streep starred alongside Redford in Out of Africa.
Redford is survived by his wife, Sibylle Szaggars, and his two daughters. He also had seven grandchildren.
When Rolling Stone asked what advice he would give his younger self, Redford first laughed and said, “Why did you ever get into this?”
He then reflected more seriously: “I’d probably say always look for the truth, even though truths can be elusive. I’m always inspired by the words of T.S. Eliot: ‘For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.’ So maybe, ‘Just follow your instincts and keep searching for the truth.’”
