Robert Redford, director and screen idol, dies at 89

Actor and director Robert Redford died at the age 89 at his home in Utah early on Tuesday morning.

According to a report from the New York Times, his death was announced by Cindi Berger, the chief executive of the publicity firm Rogers & Cowan PMK, who stated he had died in his sleep “but did not provide a specific cause.

Redford was launched into stardom when he appeared with Paul Newman in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” in 1969, which began a series of immensely popular films that included “All The President’s Men,” “The Way We Were,” “The Candidate,” as well as another star turn with Newman in “The Sting.”

As the Times’ Brooks Barnes wrote, “Perhaps Mr. Redford’s greatest cultural impact was as a make-it-up-as-he-went independent film impresario. In 1981, he founded the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating fresh cinematic voices. He took over a struggling film festival in Utah in 1984 and renamed it after the institute a few years later.

“The Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, became a global showcase and freewheeling marketplace for American films made outside the Hollywood system. With heat generated by the discovery of talents like Steven Soderbergh, who unveiled his ‘Sex, Lies and Videotape’ at the festival in 1989, Sundance became synonymous with the creative cutting edge.”

Midway through his career, he turned to directing with 1980's ‘Ordinary People,” which earned him an Oscar as well as winning Best Picture that year.

The Times report noted, “With a distaste for Hollywood’s dumb-it-down approach to moviemaking, Mr. Redford typically demanded that his films carry cultural weight, in many cases making serious topics like grief and political corruption resonate with audiences, in no small part because of his immense star power.”