Robert Redford, the actor and director who defined a generation of American cinema, has died. He was 89 years old.
Redford passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home in Sundance, Utah. According to his publicist, he died in his sleep, surrounded by the mountains he loved. No official cause of death has been released. His family asked for privacy.
Born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California, Redford grew up far from the glamour he would later come to represent. He studied art before turning to acting, eventually training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.
His breakthrough came on Broadway in 1963. Television roles followed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, small parts that slowly built his name.
Everything changed in 1969, when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, co-starring Paul Newman, made him a star overnight. It also gave him the nickname that would shape the rest of his life.
The 1970s became Redford’s golden decade. He reunited with Newman for The Sting, and starred in the political thriller All the President’s Men, playing journalist Bob Woodward. Audiences could not look away.
In 1980, Redford stepped behind the camera for the first time as a director. Ordinary People won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Critics called it one of the finest family dramas ever made.
He continued acting and directing through the decades that followed. He played a baseball phenom in The Natural, and starred opposite Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. Even in his eighties, he kept working, still drawing audiences into theaters.
But Redford’s legacy reaches beyond the films he starred in. In 1981, he founded the Sundance Institute. What began as a small retreat for independent filmmakers grew into the Sundance Film Festival, the most important launching pad for independent cinema in the world. Some of today’s biggest directors built their careers there.
Redford was also a lifelong environmentalist. He moved to Utah in 1961 and spent decades fighting to protect the natural landscape of the American West.
His personal life held both joy and loss. He married historian Lola Van Wagenen in 1958. Together they had four children. Their first son died as an infant. Their son James, a writer and producer, died of cancer in 2020. Redford and Van Wagenen later divorced. In 2009, he married artist Sibylle Szaggars, who remained by his side until the end.
Tributes poured in from across Hollywood. Jane Fonda called him a beautiful person in every way. Meryl Streep wrote that one of the lions had passed. Barbra Streisand remembered him as one of the finest actors who ever lived.
Robert Redford leaves behind a body of work that changed American film, and an institute that continues to give new filmmakers their first chance. He is survived by his wife, his daughter Shauna, his daughter Amy, and seven grandchildren.
