Robert Redford, who morphed from pin-up boy to accomplished actor and director to film-festival mogul, died on Sept. 16. He was 89. The perfect California beach-boy blond, Redford showed both comedy and dramatic chops early (Barefoot in the Park on film and Broadway, the tear-inducing “Nothing in the Dark” episode of Twilight Zone) before hitting stardom with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969. His roles ranged from box-office to quirky: The Candidate, Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, The Sting, The Great Gatsby, All the President's Men, The Natural, Out of Africa. He aged into a rumpled, wrinkled but still handsome director (Ordinary People, Quiz Show) and in 1978 he cofounded the now-influential Sundance Film Festival in Utah. “It gets pretty intense when people are going after your clothes, and mobbing you in the streets, and you have to hide,” Redford once said of his stardom. “And you also know what's coming your way is artificial, because those people are reacting to something they saw on the screen, not you as a person.”
Yes, one doesn't think of Robert Redford as dying!
I saw something about this, but didn't believe it until I saw your notice. Makes me feel old.