Seven years ago, NeoFeed reporters attended the premiere of actor Robert Redford's farewell film at TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival. "I've spent most of my life acting. I've been acting since I was 21," he said, a little emotional, on the stage of the Elgin Theatre after the screening of his final feature film, A Thief in Style (2018).
At the time, at 82 years old, Redford still had a strong on-screen presence and retained the charm and abundant blond hair that made him famous. Although the actor was already showing signs of fatigue (especially when walking, limping slightly), personally it was impossible to dissociate him from the masculine ideal he always embodied in film—the image of a handsome, successful, intelligent, strong, and virile man.
“Why talk about the end of things?” he asked, as if he didn’t want to dwell on his professional farewell. Possibly so as not to make his voice even more choked up in front of the audience of 1,500 people, who filled the two-story Canadian theater, a remnant of the vaudeville era, and gave the star a standing ovation at the end of the show.
Dead at age 89 last Tuesday, September 16, while sleeping at home in the mountains of Utah, Redford retired simply because he grew tired of acting.
As he got older, he admitted to getting "impatient" on set during the long breaks actors face between takes, waiting for camera adjustments, lighting, and other technical issues.
It was no coincidence that the actor chose to leave the scene with A Thief in Style , playing a bank robber as his last character. After that, Redford only made special appearances, such as in the blockbuster Avengers: Endgame (2019) or in an episode of the series Dark Winds (2022-2025).
It's impossible not to see " Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" as an affectionate reference to the Sundance Kid, the charming bandit who made Redford a star at age 33. It was as if the actor wanted to close his filmography by paying homage to the robber who made him famous in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969), a title that revolutionized the Western genre by humanizing the bandits and bringing more humor, drama, and musical moments to it.
Alongside Butch Cassidy, played by Paul Newman, Sundance Kid made audiences root for the outlaw (especially since he was, deep down, a good guy). The same can be said of his character Forrest Tucker, from A Thief with Style , a robber described by his victims as a "gentleman." He could even flirt with the bank teller during the robbery.
It was a perfect farewell for someone who, even in his 80s, wanted to say goodbye to the dramatic arts while still mastering the profession. And he ended it playing a leading role, a task not always easy for an actor of that age, without the same vitality as before.
Redford's screen career spanned six decades, with films that marked Hollywood as both audience and critical successes. His talent was immortalized in classics such as The Way We Were (1973), The Sting (1973), All the President's Men (1976), The Natural (1984), and Out of Africa (1985), among many others.
Often, Redford, who was a Democrat and an environmental advocate, made a point of reconciling his political convictions with his professional choices, which only increased the respect the film community had for him. All the President's Men , for example, about the Watergate scandal, was made thanks to him—he bought the rights to the book.
His name on the poster or in the credits of a film (as director or producer) always lent credibility to the production. And even if the film's ambition was purely commercial, as was the case with Indecent Proposal (1993), which grossed US$106 million, Redford managed to emerge unscathed from it with his reputation intact.
Behind the camera, he made his mark primarily with Ordinary People (1980), the drama that earned him the Oscar for best director by showing the descent into hell of a wealthy family that loses a son. He also shone as a director by revisiting the fraud in 1950s television quiz shows with Quiz Show (1994).
Redford also played an important role in consolidating independent cinema. In 1978, he created the Sundance Film Festival as an event of resistance to Hollywood's commercial cinema and a showcase for new talent.
Based in Park City, Utah, the festival is one of the most influential in the world in its segment. Walter Salles himself has always emphasized that the journey of Central Station (1998), winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, began with the support of Sundance, when the film was still in the scriptwriting phase.
To this day, every year in January, Sundance attracts film buffs, journalists, tourists, and industry professionals from all over the world eager to discover the best of independent cinema.
Not even the cold (with thermometers often registering less than 10°C) is able to scare away viewers who usually buy their tickets three months in advance for Sundance premieres .
And Redford was always the soul of the festival, for bringing a human perspective to everything he did. "But nothing lasts forever," the actor said at the premiere of his farewell film. Revisiting A Thief with Style now, after his passing, only intensifies the feeling of nostalgia.
Furthermore, the production, in recapping the criminal life of the character Forrest Tucker, presents a montage of scenes from Redford in older films. Images from The Chase (1966) and Dangerous Liaisons (1969), showing the actor running, were used to illustrate the robber's spectacular escapes, portraying Redford at the peak of his vigor and with a long road ahead of him.
