Also known as: Charles Robert Redford, Jr, Charles Robert Redford Jr.
Born in Santa Monica, California, USA
1936-08-18 (age 89 at death)
Died 2025-09-16
Charles Robert Redford Jr. (August 18, 1936 – September 16, 2025) was an American actor, director and activist. Throughout his career, he won several film awards, including the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1980 film Ordinary People. He also received an honorary Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2002 and was also the founder of the Sundance Film Festival. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2016 he was honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Appearing on stage in the late 1950s, Redford's television career began in 1960, including an appearance on The Twilight Zone in 1962. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (1962). His greatest Broadway success was as the stuffy newlywed husband of co-star Elizabeth Ashley's character in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963). Redford made his film debut in War Hunt (1962). His role in Inside Daisy Clover (1965) won him a Golden Globe for the best new star. He starred alongside Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), which was a huge success and made him a major star. He had a critical and box office hit with Jeremiah Johnson (1972), and in 1973 he had the greatest hit of his career, the blockbuster crime caper The Sting, a re-union with Paul Newman, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award; that same year, he also starred opposite Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. The popular and acclaimed All the President's Men (1976) was a landmark film for Redford.
In the 1980s, Redford began his career as a director with Ordinary People (1980), which was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning four Oscars including Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Director for Redford. He continued acting and starred in Brubaker (1980), as well as playing the male lead in Out of Africa (1985), which was an enormous box office success and won seven Oscars including Best Picture. He released his third film as a director, A River Runs Through It, in 1992. He went on to receive Best Director and Best Picture nominations in 1995 for Quiz Show. He received a second Academy Award—for Lifetime Achievement—in 2002. In 2010, he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur. He additionally won BAFTA, Directors Guild of America, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards.
From Wikipedia
Charles Robert Redford Jr. (August 18, 1936 – September 16, 2025) was an American actor, director and producer, celebrated for his magnetic presence as a leading man during the American New Wave. Across a career spanning more than six decades, Redford earned widespread recognition and numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and five Golden Globe Awards, (including a Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994). He has also received various honors including the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1996, the Academy Honorary Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 and the Honorary César in 2019.
Redford began his career on television in the late 1950s, appearing in anthology series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. He made his Broadway debut in Neil Simon's comedy Barefoot in the Park (1963) before taking film roles in War Hunt (1962) and Inside Daisy Clover (1965). He then achieved Hollywood stardom with Barefoot in the Park (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Downhill Racer (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Candidate (1972) and The Sting (1973), with the last earning him an Academy Award nomination.
His stardom continued with films such as The Way We Were (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), All the President's Men (1976), The Electric Horseman (1979), The Natural (1984) and Out of Africa (1985). Later credits include Sneakers (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), All Is Lost (2013), Truth (2015), Our Souls at Night (2017) and The Old Man & the Gun (2018). He also played Alexander Pierce in the MCU films Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), the latter serving as his final on-screen role.
Redford made his directorial debut with the family drama Ordinary People (1980), which won four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. His later directing credits include The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), A River Runs Through It (1992), Quiz Show (1994), The Horse Whisperer (1998) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000). A major advocate for independent cinema, Redford co-founded the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival in 1978, helping to foster a new generation of filmmakers. Beyond his artistic career, he was noted for his environmental activism, his support of Native American and Indigenous rights and his advocacy for LGBTQ equality.