Robert Redford, a Broadway Leading Man Before Becoming a Hollywood Star, Dies at 89

Robert Redford, the quintessential Hollywood leading man who parlayed matinee-idol looks into an expansive career screen and stage career, has died at 89 at his home in Sundance, Utah.

Long before Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made him a household name, Redford was a working New York actor, first appearing on Broadway as a replacement in the 1959 drama Tall Story (the film adaptation marked his screen debut). The early ’60s found him in supporting roles in The Highest Tree and Sunday in New York, for which he earned a Theatre World Award, before Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park (1963) turned him into a star. Redford starred as Paul Bratter, a role he would reprise on screen alongside Jane Fonda.

Redford bounced between stage and television, appearing in anthology series’ like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Playhouse 90, and The Twilight Zone, in which he famously played the personification of Death, coming for a frail and frightened elderly woman played by Gladys Cooper in the episode “Nothing in the Dark.”

Hollywood soon eclipsed his Broadway career, and Redford became one of the defining film stars of the 1970s. His breakthrough came with George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), opposite Paul Newman, followed by the Oscar-winning caper The Sting (1973), which solidified the Redford–Newman partnership. That same year, he was paired with Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. Among his other credits: Downhill Racer, All the President’s Men, and The Natural.

Redford stepped behind the camera for Ordinary People, earning four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. His later films as director include A River Runs Through It (1992) and Quiz Show (1994). He also founded the Sundance Film Festival, which has become the country’s largest festival for independent films.

Redford earned a National Medal of the Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1996, became a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2005, a was the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016.

He is survived by wife Sibylle, two children, and several grandchildren.