Hollywood actor and Oscar-winning director Robert Redford, known for films including Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, All The President’s Men and The Sting, has died at the age of 89.
Redford, who was also the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, the largest independent film festival in the US, died on Tuesday morning.
In a statement, his representative said he was “surrounded by those he loved”, at home in “the place he loved” in the mountains of Utah. “He will be missed greatly,” she added.
Image: The actor and filmmaker won the Oscar for best director for Ordinary People in 1981. Pic: AP
Born Charles Robert Redford Jr in Santa Monica, California, in 1936, he attended college on a baseball scholarship but later went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
He debuted on Broadway in the late 1950s before moving into television, in shows such as The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Untouchables.
Rising to stardom in the 1960s, Redford became a go-to leading man in Hollywood and a huge star of the following decade, leading films including The Candidate, All the President’s Men and The Way We Were.
He worked hard to transcend being typecast for his good looks, through his political advocacy and a willingness to take on unglamorous roles.
Image: Starring alongside Charles Dierkop and Robert Shaw in The Sting. Pic: Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock
Image: On set behind the camera during the filming of A River Runs Through It. Pic: AP
In the 1990s and 2000s, his film credits included Indecent Proposal, The Last Castle and Spy Game, and he also worked actively as a filmmaker – helming movies including A River Runs Through It and The Legend Of Bagger Vance. In 1998, he both starred in and directed The Horse Whisperer.
But he was best known for his role as wily outlaw the Sundance Kid, opposite Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy in the 1969 film. The pair became a famous screen partnership, starring opposite each other again in The Sting a few years later, and good friends.
As well as his starring roles, Redford was also an activist and an accomplished filmmaker – winning the Oscar for best director for Ordinary People in 1981. It was the second of his two Academy Awards – the first won for his acting performance in The Sting – as well as an honorary prize in 2002.
Image: Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All The President’s Men, released in 1976. Pic: Everett/Shutterstock
In a career spanning seven decades, he also received three Golden Globe Awards, including the Cecil B DeMille lifetime achievement honor in 1994.
In his later years, Redford took on a challenging role in All Is Lost, a 2013 survival story that featured virtually no other characters and barely any dialogue. His performance earned a standing ovation after the film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 2018, he received critical acclaim again in what he called his farewell movie, The Old Man And The Gun.
His legacy lives on in the Sundance Film Festival, which grew into a cornerstone of the film industry and provided a launching pad for filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, Gina Prince-Bythewood and Darren Aronofsky.
And in 2016, former President Barack Obama awarded him the presidential medal of freedom – considered the US government’s highest civilian honour – saying at the time that Americans “admire Bob not just for his remarkable acting, but for having figured out what to do next”.
Image: Pic: Reuters
Robert Redford leaves behind his wife Sibylle Szaggars and two daughters – Shauna, a painter, and Amy, an actress and director.
He was previously married to Lola Van Wagenen. One of their children, Scott, died at the age of two months from sudden infant death syndrome. Another, James, died of cancer in 2020.
‘One of the lions has passed’
Image: Meryl Streep starred alongside Redford in Out Of Africa in 1985. Pic: Cover Images via AP
Tributes have been shared across social media following the announcement of Redford’s death.
Meryl Streep, who starred in Out Of Africa and Lions For Lambs opposite Redford, said: “One of the lions has passed. Rest in peace my lovely friend.”
Filmmaker Ron Howard, known for Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind, described Redford as “a tremendously influential cultural figure for the creative choices” he made as an actor, producer and director, and said Sundance had been a “gamechanger”.
Image: Pictured with his wife Sibylle Szaggars in 2012. Pic: Reuters
Marlee Matlin, star of the Oscar-winning CODA, said the film “came to the attention of everyone” because of the Sundance Festival.
“Sundance happened because of Robert Redford. A genius has passed,” she said.
“He was part of a new and exciting Hollywood in the 70s and 80s,” wrote author Stephen King. “Hard to believe he was 89.”
Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, wrote: “Decades ago, Robert Redford came to Utah and fell in love with this place.
“He cherished our landscapes and built a legacy that made Utah a home for storytelling and creativity.
“Through Sundance and his devotion to conservation, he shared Utah with the world. Today we honor his life, his vision, and his lasting contribution to our state.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has apologised to Donald Trump over an anti-tariff advert featuring a clip of Ronald Reagan.
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific summit in South Korea, he also said he had reviewed the commercial and told Ontario Premier Doug Ford not to air it.
“I did apologise to the president,” Mr Carney said on Saturday, confirming earlier comments made by the US president on Friday.
“I told [Doug] Ford I did not want to go forward with the ad,” he added.
The private conversation with Mr Trump happened at a dinner hosted by South Korea’s president on Wednesday.
The commercial, commissioned by Mr Ford, included a quote from Republican former president Ronald Reagan saying that tariffs cause trade wars and economic disaster.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:26
TV advert deepens trade rift between Trump and Canada
In a post on Truth Social, he wrote: “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”
The ad by the Ontario government has a voiceover of Ronald Reagan criticising tariffs on foreign goods while saying they cause job losses and trade wars.
The video uses five complete sentences from a five-minute weekly address recorded in 1987, but edited together out of order.
The ad does not mention that the former US president was explaining that tariffs imposed on Japan by his administration should be seen as a sadly unavoidable exception to his basic belief in free trade as the key to prosperity.
Meanwhile, Mr Carney said his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday were a turning point in relations after years of tensions.
He also met Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on the sidelines of the summit.
Donald Trump has said he is designating Nigeria a “country of particular concern” as “thousands of Christians” are being killed there.
Posting on Truth Social, he said radical Islamists are committing “mass slaughter” and Christianity is “facing an existential threat” in the West African nation.
The US president said he was asking officials to “immediately look into this matter, and report back to me”.
Mr Trump quoted figures suggesting 3,100 Christians had been killed in Nigeria, but did not state any source for the numbers or timeframe.
He stated: “We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”
Nigeria now joins North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and China on a list of countries “of particular concern” due to violations of religious freedom.
The move is one step before possible sanctions – which could mean a ban on all non-humanitarian aid.
More on Donald Trump
Related Topics:
The Nigerian government has vehemently rejected the claims. Analysts have said that, while Christians are among those targeted, the majority of victims of armed groups are Muslims in the country’s Muslim-majority north, where the most attacks take place.
Mr Trump’s move follows efforts by Republican senator Ted Cruz to get fellow evangelical Christians to lobby Congress over claims of “Christian mass murder” in Nigeria.
Boko Haram – which kidnapped more than 270 schoolgirls in 2014 – is the main group cited in previous warnings by US and international governments.
The group has committed “egregious violations of religious freedom”, according to a 2021 report by the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
It said more than 37,000 people had been killed by Islamist groups in Nigeria since 2011.
Churches and Christian neighbourhoods have been targeted in the past, but experts say Muslims are the most common victims of Boko Haram attacks, which routinely target the police, military and government.
Other groups operating said to be operating in the country include Boko Haram offshoot Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).
About half of Nigeria’s population is estimated to be Muslim, who mostly live in the north, with roughly the other half following Christianity.
US travellers are currently urged to “reconsider” travel to Nigeria due to a threat of terrorism, crime, kidnapping and armed gangs. The UK advises its citizens along similar lines.
The US is drastically cutting the number of refugees it will allow into the country to 7,500, and giving priority to white South Africans.
The new figure, announced on Thursday in a memo in the Federal Registry, the official journal of the US administration, is a dramatic reduction from last year’s 125,000, set by former president Joe Biden.
No reason was given for the decrease, but the note said the admission of the 7,500 refugees during the 2026 fiscal year was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:50
Trump-Xi meeting: Three key takeaways
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
6:44
Is Trump trying to topple Maduro?
The notice posted to the register’s website said the 7,500 admissions would “primarily” be allocated to Afrikaner South Africans and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands”.
It is half the 15,000 total set for 2021 during Donald Trump’s first term in office at the height of the COVID pandemic, which reports said was the previous lowest refugee admissions cap.
Refugee rights groups were quick to condemn the proposal, with International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) president Sharif Aly, saying that by “privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicising a humanitarian programme”.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Global Refuge, said: “Concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the programme’s purpose as well as its credibility.”
More on Donald Trump
Related Topics:
Human Rights First president, Uzra Zeya, called it a “new low point” in US foreign policy, which will “further destabilise front-line states that host over two-thirds of the world’s nearly 43 million refugees, undermining US national security in tandem”.
Image: US President Donald Trump showed South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa printed-out articles in the Oval Office. Pic: AP
In May, Mr Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House, claiming white farmers in his nation were being killed and “persecuted”.
A video purporting to show burial sites for murdered white farmers was played but was later shown to be scenes from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over multiple years.
The South African government has vehemently denied that Afrikaners and other white South Africans are being persecuted.
In January, the US president suspended the US Refugee Admissions Programme (USRAP) to, in his words, allow US authorities to prioritise national security and public safety.
During the Oval Office meeting, Mr Ramaphosa said only that he hoped that Trump officials would listen to South Africans about the issue, and later said he believed there is “doubt and disbelief about all this in [Mr Trump’s] head”.