Robert Redford – Biography, Age, Career, Net Worth

Who is Robert Redford?

August 18, 1936 marked the birth of Charles Robert Redford Jr., an American actor and filmmaker. He has received numerous accolades such as an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1996, the Academy Honorary Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Honorary César in 2019. In 2014, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Despite being a television-cum-stage actor, he became a significant success in Hollywood with films such as ‘The Way We Were’, ‘The Milagro Beanfield War’, and ‘Quiz Show’. He was not only an actor, but he also worked in various other fields related to cinema, particularly film direction and production. He appeared in several classic films during his time, including ‘The Sting and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’, ‘The Horse Whisperer’, and ‘The Conspirator’. These successes led to him becoming a bankable star, and the types of roles he played cemented his position in Hollywood for good. To gain a comprehensive understanding of this personality’s childhood, profile, career, and timeline, scroll further and continue reading.

Biography

Robert Redford’s birth date was August 18th, 1936 in Santa Monica, California, and he was born to Martha Hart and Charles Robert Redford. William Redford is the brother of him.

Van Nuys High School was where Robert Redford graduated from. Despite his academic shortcomings, he had a strong interest in the arts and athletics. Upon completion of high school, he went to the University of Colorado and became a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. Robert Redford’s travels to Europe and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City were preceded by studying painting at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

Personal Life

Lola Van Wagenen was the wife of Robert Redford, who he divorced in 1985. The couple’s fourth child, Amy Redford, is a well-known American actress.

In 2009, he married Sibylle Szaggars again after Lola Van Wagene’s divorce.

James Redford, Amy Redford, Scott Anthony Redford, and Shauna Redford are the four children he has been blessed with.

Dylan Redford, Lena Redford, Conor Schlosser, Eden August, and Mica Schlosser are among the grandchildren he has.

Career

His acting career took off in the 50s and he starred in a number of shows including ‘Perry Mason’, ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’, ‘Route 66’, ‘Playhouse 90’, ‘The Twilight Zone’ and many more. In 1960, he played a mentally unstable man in ‘Breakdown’, an episode of ‘Rescue 8’, a high-adrenaline series. In 1962, he made his debut in film with ‘War Hunt’, but he didn’t receive the recognition he had hoped for.

He resumed his career as an actor on television shows and his final appearance was in the ABC medical drama series ‘Breaking Point’ on October 7th, 1963. He quickly made the decision to broaden his horizons and attempted his hand at theatre. Small roles were assigned to him in ‘Tall Story’, ‘Sunday in New York’, and ‘Barefoot in the Park’.

His fame and recognition were greatly increased when he was cast in the western classic ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ in 1969. Not pigeonholed in the ‘pretty-boy’ image, he sought more challenging projects and oozed immense sex appeal on-screen in ‘Downhill Racer’ and ‘Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here’, both of which were released in 1969.

His career flourished as a result of movies like ‘The Way We Were’ and ‘The Sting’, both released in 1973. His experimentation with more challenging roles led him to score another hit at the box office with his performance in the political drama, ‘All the President’s Men’, in 1976. In 1980, he made his debut as a director with ‘Ordinary People’, which also earned him his first Academy Award.

Ordinary People (1980) was his debut as a director in a drama film, depicting an upper-middle class family’s gradual disintegration after the death of their son. Redford was credited with obtaining a powerful dramatic performance from Mary Tyler Moore, as well as superb work from Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton, who also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

The Natural (1984) was a baseball drama that he starred in shortly thereafter. Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa (1985), with Redford in the male lead role opposite Meryl Streep, became a large box office success (combined 1985 and 1986 grosses placed it at No. 5 for 1986), won a Golden Globe for Best Picture, and won seven Oscars, including Best Picture.

Redford didn’t receive a nomination for Best Actress, even though Streep was nominated for it. The movie was Redford’s most successful movie of the decade and Pollack and Redford’s most successful movie together. The box office did not see much success for Redford’s next film, Legal Eagles (1986), with Debra Winger.

Redford did not direct again until The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), a well-crafted, though not commercially suOther directorial projects have included the period drama A River Runs Through It (1992), based on Norman Maclean’s novella starring Craig Sheffer, Brad Pitt, and Tom Skerritt. A nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director was given to Redford.

He directed the documentary Quiz Show in 1994 about the quiz show scandal of the late 1950s. In the latter film, Redford worked from a screenplay by Paul Attanasio with noted cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and a strong cast that featured Paul Scofield, John Turturro, Rob Morrow, and Ralph Fiennes. David Ansen of Newsweek wrote that Robert Redford has become a more contented movie star in the past decade, but he has also become a more daring and accomplished filmmaker. His highest-rated movie since ‘Ordinary People’ is ‘Quiz Show’.

He released his third film as a director, A River Runs Through It, in 1992, which was a return to mainstream success for Redford as a director and brought a young Brad Pitt to greater prominence. In 1993, he played what became one of his most popular and recognized roles, starring in Indecent Proposal as a billionaire businessman who tests a couple’s morals; the film became one of the year’s biggest hits.

Redford also continued work in films with political contexts, such as Havana (1990), playing Jack Weil, a professional gambler in 1959 Cuba during the Revolution, as well as Sneakers (1992), in which he co-starred with River Phoenix and Sidney Poitier.

In April 2014, Redford played the main antagonist of the Marvel Studios superhero film Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Alexander Pierce, the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. and leader of the Hydra cell operating the Triskelion. In A Walk in the Woods (2015), Redford co-produced it with Emma Thompson and Nick Nolte and starred with them. Redford had optioned the film rights for the book from Bryson after reading it more than a decade earlier, with the intent of costarring in it with Paul Newman but had shelved the project after Newman’s death.

Redford played bank robber Forrest Tucker in the David Lowery directed drama film The Old Man & the Gun, which was released in September 2018, and for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. Vox reported that Alissa Wikinson wrote that “Both Redford and Lowery in The Old Man & the Gun are returning to their roots”. For Redford, a role as a lifelong bank robber feels like a fitting cap to a career effectively launched half a century ago with his role alongside Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Redford announced his retirement from acting in August 2018, but later regretted it because ‘you never know’.

He made a brief return to his role as Alexander Pierce for a cameo appearance in Avengers: Endgame, which was filmed in 2017 before the previous film was completed.

Net Worth

The estimated net worth of Robert Redford in 2025 is $200 million. The earnings he makes from his extensive career as an actor and filmmaker constitute his net worth. In his nearly seven-decade-long career, Redford has appeared in numerous memorable films, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, Out of Africa, Indecent Proposal, The Horse Whisperer, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The 1973 film The Sting received him a nomination for a Best Actor Oscar. He is a recognized director and producer who has worked on noteworthy projects like The Milagro Beanfield War, Quiz Show, and The Company You Keep. The 1994 Academy Awards honored Quiz Show with Best Picture and Best Director nominations.

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