Robert Redford built one of Hollywood’s most durable careers on the strength of a golden-boy image. He had movie star looks, blockbuster films, awards, and a place at the center of American culture for more than five decades. But behind that famous smile was a life repeatedly touched by loss, grief that followed him from his youth to his final years, and a private world that often looked far harder than his public one. Loss found him long before Hollywood did.
Charles Robert Redford Jr. was born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California. His father, Charles Redford Sr. , worked as an accountant, and his mother, Martha, came from Texas.
Robert grew up mainly in Van Nuys, but trips to Texas became important to him. He later said those visits helped shape his deep love of nature, long before Sundance, environmental causes, or movie fame. School was a different story. Robert called himself a bad student who cared more about sports, art, and time spent outdoors.
He played baseball, spent time around tennis, and even helped Pancho Gonzales warm up for matches. At 11, he went through a frightening health scare when he caught a mild case of polio. He was put to bed for two weeks and had trouble moving, though he never became paralyzed. Another early loss came when an uncle he loved was killed during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.
Robert remembered that the family barely spoke about it afterward. Then came trouble of another kind. He later admitted stealing hubcaps, sneaking into other people’s pools, and getting into problems with police. He was even arrested after being in a car that had stolen jewelry in the trunk.
The deepest blow of his youth had nothing to do with rebellion. His mother had already suffered the loss of twin girls after a dangerous pregnancy. Then in 1955, when Robert was only 18, Martha died from septicemia after serious health problems linked to another pregnancy. She was just 40.
Robert would carry regret about that loss for the rest of his life. In 2018, he said his mother had always believed there was something in him that would turn out okay. What hurt him was that she died before he could thank her. Fame had not even begun, but death had already entered his story more than once.
After high school, Robert entered the University of Colorado in Boulder on a baseball scholarship. Sports seemed like a possible path. Instead, college became another period of drifting. He joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity and worked at a local restaurant and bar called The Sink, but he also began drinking heavily.
Robert later said he discovered alcohol and quickly lost his scholarship. After about a year and a half, he was expelled. By then, Robert was drifting badly. He later said he felt he had failed at nearly everything he tried.
He had been fired from a supermarket job. His father helped him get work at Standard Oil, and that did not last either. For a time, he worked in California oil fields, then he left the country. Robert traveled through France, Spain, and Italy, spending time around art and culture.
He studied painting and began seeing the United States from a different point of view. When he returned home, he studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and also took classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan. Another part of his life changed when he met Lola Van Wagenen after returning from Europe. She was interested in history, education, and activism, while he was still trying to understand what he wanted to become.
They married in Las Vegas on August 9, 1958, before Robert had any real film fame, and soon they became parents. Their first son, Scott Anthony Redford, was born on September 1, 1959. Less than three months later, on November 19, Scott died from sudden infant death syndrome. Robert was only 21, and Lola was 20.
Years later, he said they were simply not equipped to deal with something that traumatic. He said people move on because they have to, but a loss like that never completely disappears. Another terrible pattern had begun before his career had even taken off. Around this same period, acting was becoming the one place where Robert seemed to find direction.
His career started in New York, first with small stage parts, and then television. He made his Broadway debut in Tall Story in 1959, followed by The Highest Tree and Sunday in New York. Television work came steadily. He appeared in shows such as Naked City, Maverick, The Untouchables, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Route 66, Dr.
Kildare, The Twilight Zone, and The Virginian. He earned an Emmy nomination for his work in 1962. His first film appearance came in the 1960 screen version of Tall Story, starring Anthony Perkins and Jane Fonda. The movie itself was not a success, but it created a connection that lasted for decades.
Fonda later said there was always a mystery around Robert because he did not reveal much about himself. She even admitted that she fell in love with him each time they worked together. His biggest stage break came in 1963 when he played the stiff, newlywed husband in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park. That success pushed him toward larger film roles.
One person who helped his early film career was Natalie Wood. They had attended the same high school, though they were not close there. Years later, Wood saw him on Broadway and remembered him when Inside Daisy Clover was being cast. Robert later said he owed the beginning of his film career to her support.
In the 1965 movie, he played a troubled movie star opposite Wood and won a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer. They worked together again in This Property Is Condemned, and Robert became close to Wood and her family. By then, Hollywood could clearly see his face, charm, and presence. The problem was that Hollywood was beginning to see almost nothing else.
Robert’s looks became both his advantage and his frustration. He was blond, athletic, and easy to sell as a romantic leading man, but he worried that studios would trap him in that image. He turned down roles in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate. Director Mike Nichols reportedly felt Robert was too good-looking to play Benjamin Braddock, and that kind of reaction bothered him.
In 1967, he returned to Barefoot in the Park, this time on film with Jane Fonda, and the movie was a hit. Robert was already proving that he would not simply take whatever Hollywood offered. In 1968, he had agreed to star in the Western Blue. He was literally on his way to Texas for the first day of shooting when he began questioning the unfinished script pages he had been given.
He later remembered thinking, “Wait a minute. What am I coming out to shoot? ”
He got off the project before reaching the set. Paramount sued him for breaking his contract, and the dispute was later settled through other film work.
That stubborn choice could have hurt him badly. Instead, the next year changed everything. Robert was cast as the Sundance Kid opposite Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The studio had resisted him, seeing him as just another Hollywood blonde, but Newman supported the choice.
Their chemistry was immediate. Robert’s quiet Sundance balanced Newman’s faster, more talkative Butch, and the movie became a huge success. Robert was suddenly a major star. He won a BAFTA for his work in that film and others.
More importantly, he had found the kind of image he wanted: intelligent, cool, independent, and slightly outside the system. Off screen, their partnership also grew into a friendship that would last for decades. The 1970s made Robert Redford one of the biggest stars in the world. After some films that did not perform well, he entered an extraordinary run.
The Candidate did solid business, Jeremiah Johnson grew into a major success, and The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand became one of the biggest films of 1973. Then came The Sting, which reunited him with Paul Newman. The movie became a huge hit and earned Robert the only best actor Oscar nomination of his career. In 1974, The Great Gatsby also drew large audiences, and movie exhibitors voted Robert Hollywood’s top box office star each year from 1974 through 1976.
Three Days of the Condor, The Great Waldo Pepper, and All the President’s Men kept him at the center of popular culture. In All the President’s Men, he also served as executive producer, showing that he wanted more than handsome leading roles. The Watergate story matched his interest in politics, power, and corruption. Yet the public image around him kept coming back to his appearance.
He became one of the most famous sex symbols of the decade. Robert did not enjoy that label. In 1974, he said he had never thought of himself as a glamorous or especially handsome man and called that image a handicap. He believed it could make people ignore his work.
At home, Lola had her own serious interests. She co-founded Consumer Action Now in 1970 and built a life around education, history, environmental work, and activism. Together, she and Robert raised Shauna, James, and Amy after the loss of Scott. Their family life gave him something Hollywood could not.
Still, the pressure around them grew as his fame exploded. Robert would later say people assumed his life had been easy because of his looks and success, but that idea felt completely false to him. At the start of the 1980s, Robert reached another career peak, this time behind the camera. His first film as a director was Ordinary People, a story about a family breaking apart after the death of a son.
For Robert, its themes of grief, guilt, and a family trying to survive loss were painfully familiar. The film became a major success, winning Best Picture, while Robert won the Academy Award for Best Director. During this same period, his family was hit by events that made professional success feel far less important. In 1981, Natalie Wood died during a boat trip at only 43.
Robert had known her since their early years and remained close to her family. He later remembered her as someone with a big heart. Then, on August 1, 1983, Robert’s daughter, Shauna, faced a nightmare of her own. Her boyfriend, University of Colorado journalism student Sid Wells, was shot dead in his apartment.
Robert was preparing to film The Natural at the time, but he went to his daughter and attended Wells’s funeral. He also helped provide security for the Wells family while questions surrounded the killing. A roommate, Thayne Alan Smika, was arrested, but prosecutors did not file charges then because they said there was not enough evidence. Smika later disappeared.
Just one year after the murder, Shauna had another frightening experience. In March 1984, her car crashed through a guardrail near Salt Lake City and plunged into the Jordan River. Three motorists pulled her from the partly submerged vehicle. Because she was wearing a seatbelt, she escaped with only minor injuries.
By then, Robert had already lost his mother, his infant son, and a close friend, while his daughter had lived through murder and a dangerous crash. His career kept moving, but the private cost around him was becoming harder to ignore. And while Robert dealt with one family crisis after another, the marriage that had been beside him since before fame was also beginning to come apart. By the middle of the 1980s, Robert’s marriage to Lola had lasted more than 25 years, but the relationship had been under strain for a long time.
Entertainment reports said they had spent years living largely apart, and Robert was discussing a divorce settlement while filming Out of Africa in 1984. The movie itself became one of the biggest successes of his decade, winning Best Picture and several other Oscars. Robert and Lola separated after about 27 years of marriage, with their divorce generally placed in the mid-1980s. There was no huge public scandal or ugly war between them.
Robert later described the split as mutual and said it was right to move on. He said they still had love, affection, friendship, and children they both cared about. Robert entered a different stage of his personal life. He had lengthy romances with Brazilian actress Sonia Braga and costume assistant Kathy O’Rear.
Years later, he joked that even when he was single, he never really understood dating. In 1996, Robert met German visual artist Sibylle Szaggars while she was skiing at his Sundance Mountain Resort. What stood out was how little she cared about his fame. She later admitted she did not really know his films, and Robert said that made the beginning of their relationship feel fresh.
He described it as two human beings meeting and finding a connection before success could color the moment. Sibylle moved in with him in Sundance, Utah in 1996, and the two built a private life around art, nature, environmental work, and shared causes. Robert had long loved the outdoors, and Utah became a central part of his life. In 1998, he spoke openly about fatherhood.
He told people that the hardest thing in the world was when your children had problems. He said his family had taken many hits that the public did not know about, and he wanted to keep it that way for their sake. Then he made a striking point. If someone asked about his greatest achievement, he said it was not the films.
It was his children. Through all those years, Paul Newman remained one of the people Robert trusted most. Their friendship had started when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid changed Robert’s career, but it grew far beyond that film. Robert remembered that Newman had supported him when the studio was unsure about casting him.
They both came from theater and enjoyed playing elaborate jokes on each other. Robert even hoped they would work together again on A Walk in the Woods. That plan never happened. Newman died from lung cancer on September 26, 2008, at the age of 83.
Speaking afterward, Robert said, “This was a man who lived a life that really meant something and will for some time to come. ”
The following year brought a major change in his private world. On July 11, 2009, Robert married Sibylle Szaggars in Hamburg, Germany. After more than a decade together, Robert later called Sibylle a very special person.
As Robert moved into his late 70s and 80s, he kept proving he was not ready to disappear from the screen. In 2013, All Is Lost placed almost the entire film on him. He was the only cast member, and the demanding role earned him a Golden Globe nomination. The next year, he surprised younger audiences as Alexander Pierce in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
In 2015, he appeared in A Walk in the Woods, a project he had once hoped to make with Paul Newman, and also played Dan Rather in Truth. He later appeared in Pete’s Dragon and reunited with Jane Fonda in Our Souls at Night in 2017. In 2018, Robert starred as bank robber Forrest Tucker in The Old Man and the Gun and earned another Golden Globe nomination. Around that time, he announced his retirement from acting but quickly seemed unsure about making it sound final.
He later admitted he regretted the announcement because you never know. That proved true when he briefly returned as Alexander Pierce in Avengers: Endgame. The hardest later blow came through Robert’s second son, David James Redford, known as Jamie. Born in 1962, Jamie had struggled with serious health problems for much of his life.
He was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare disease affecting the liver and bile ducts. In 1993, he went through two liver transplants. Instead of allowing those experiences to define him only as a patient, Jamie turned them into work that could help others. He founded the James Redford Institute for Transplant Awareness and made The Kindness of Strangers, a documentary about organ donors and recipients.
Like his father, he also became a filmmaker and activist. But his health problems returned. His liver disease came back in 2018. In November 2019, doctors discovered bile duct cancer in his liver while he was waiting for another transplant.
Jamie died on October 16, 2020, at 58. Robert was 84. A representative said the grief of losing a child was immeasurable and described Jamie as a loving son, husband, and father whose work would live on. For Robert, the loss carried a cruel echo.
More than 60 years after losing his first son, he was now grieving another child. He had once said that terrible loss never completely disappears and can surface in ways people do not even understand. In his final years, Robert stayed tied to Sundance, art, environmental causes, family, and the quieter life he had built away from Hollywood. He had seven grandchildren.
Work never disappeared completely. In 2023, he made an uncredited voice cameo as Bob Woodward in White House Plumbers. He was also an executive producer on Dark Winds, and in an episode aired in March 2025, he appeared with George R. R.
Martin as a detainee playing chess. It became his final acting performance. On September 16, 2025, Robert died in his sleep at his home in Sundance at the age of 89. His publicist said he died in the mountains, in the place he loved, surrounded by people he loved.
He was later buried on his Sundance property after a private funeral. Tributes came from across Hollywood. Jane Fonda said he meant a great deal to her and praised what he did for independent movies. Meryl Streep wrote, “One of the lions has passed.
” Barbra Streisand remembered him as charismatic, intelligent, intense, and one of the finest actors. Dustin Hoffman called working with him one of the greatest experiences he ever had. Yet even after Robert was gone, one old family tragedy remained unfinished. His death brought fresh attention to the 1983 murder of Shauna’s boyfriend, Sid Wells.
The day after Robert died, the FBI announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to Thayne Smika’s arrest. Smika had disappeared decades earlier, and bail had been set at $5 million if he was ever found. Robert had once personally called authorities to thank them for continuing to pursue the case.
Decades after Sid was killed, and even after Robert himself was gone, that search was still open.