Robert Redford, the elegant symbol of American cinema for more than half a century, died on Tuesday at the age of 89, leaving behind a vast cinematic legacy and a progressive, environmentalist message.
The actor and director, a left-leaning activist and champion of independent film in the United States, “passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home in Sundance, in the Utah mountains, the place he loved, surrounded by those who loved him,” his agent Cindi Berger said in a statement.
Donald Trump paid tribute to the memory of a “great” of cinema. “There were years when there was no one better,” said the American president.
For actress Jane Fonda, the California native, born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, was “a beautiful person in every respect.” His longtime collaborator in several films also said in a statement to AFP that he represented “an America we must continue to fight for.”
A committed Democrat, environmentalist, defender of Native American tribes, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival—today a global benchmark for independent cinema—the cowboy with long golden locks spent his life carving his own path, keeping his distance from Hollywood whenever he could.
“Bob’s vision (…) launched a movement that, more than four decades later, has inspired generations of artists and redefined cinema in the United States,” the organizers of the festival said in a statement.
His commitment to developing an artistic community that would not destroy the mountains made Sundance “a place of beauty and peace, serenity and innocence,” said Monika Suter, a 59-year-old Swiss pastry chef who has been visiting nearly every year for 30 years.
Major studios offered Robert Redford some 70 roles, most of them as positive, engaged characters (Three Days of the Condor), romantic figures (The Great Gatsby), or sympathetic rogues, even when he played con men such as in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, or his final role in The Old Man and the Gun.
Although he received an Academy Award in 2002 for his lifetime achievement, he was never honored as an actor for a single film, despite highly acclaimed performances in Jeremiah Johnson (Palme d’Or in 1972), All the President’s Men (about the Watergate scandal, 4 Oscars in 1977), and Out of Africa (7 Oscars in 1986).
“One of the lions has left us,” reacted Meryl Streep, his co-star in Out of Africa. “Rest in peace, my dear friend.”
Celebrities from across the entertainment world are sharing tributes and remembrances for legendary actor Robert Redford, who died on Tuesday morning at 89. https://t.co/0WxHV5QgEs pic.twitter.com/mTwQ1FzUY1
— ABC News (@ABC) September 16, 2025
“His elegance, his smile”
His love for cinema later led him behind the camera. Robert Redford directed, among others, Ordinary People (Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director in 1981), A River Runs Through It (1992), and The Company You Keep (2012).
In 1998, he introduced a 14-year-old Scarlett Johansson in The Horse Whisperer. “Bob taught me what acting could be, and his generosity and patience inspired me to explore the possibilities of this art,” she said in a statement.
“Young, Bob was so handsome that people didn’t listen to him, they just watched him—his gestures, his elegance, his smile,” recalled Gilles Jacob, former president of the Cannes Film Festival, speaking to AFP. “Then he directed great films, he invented Sundance, he grew old—he, the myth.”
For Thierry Frémaux, the current general delegate of the world’s biggest film festival, Robert Redford was “more than a myth, he was a role model”—for “a life dedicated to cinema, unmatched elegance in his art,” as well as for “his commitments and his battles.”
In November 2016, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.
Two years later, in 2018, just after The Old Man and The Gun, the octogenarian, his face weathered by the sun and wind of the great outdoors, announced his retirement.
