Actor, director Robert Redford dies at 89

A longtime actor and award winning director whose films explored serious questions, Redford died on Tuesday morning at his home in the mountains of Utah, according to a statement from his publicist, Cindi Berger. Redford began his acting career in the 1960s, making various one-time appearances on shows like Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone, and The Virginian. He emerged as a screen icon in the late 1960s and 1970s and, while sometimes cast as a screen heartthrob, tackled a wide variety of roles, whether as a Western outlaw in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, an aspiring senator in The Candidate, a wealthy tycoon in The Great Gatsby, or a determined newspaper reporter in All the President’s Men. His work as an actor spanned six decades and made him recognizable to multiple generations, with appearances in films including Out of Africa (1985), Indecent Proposal (1993), and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).

Redford won his first Oscar in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, a film about a wealthy family strained by a son’s accidental death. His other directing credits included A River Runs Through It and Quiz Show. He received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2002, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. 

Redford was known for promoting environmental causes. In a 2007 interview he told a reporter he didn’t align himself with a specific organized religion. “If anything is my guide, nature is,” he said at the time.