In his heyday, Robert Redford was Hollywood’s golden boy. Sure, he started on Broadway, but it didn’t take long before he was headlining films like “Barefoot in the Park” with Jane Fonda and “The Way We Were” with Barbra Streisand, where he basically redefined what it meant to be a leading man. And he didn’t stop there — Redford took a swing behind the camera, too, snagging an Oscar for Best Director with “Ordinary People” in 1980. There’s no denying that his star shone brightly for decades, yet in the later years of his career, the spotlight began to fade.
With a career spanning six decades, he racked up awards like it was his job (and well, it was), including the coveted Cecil B. DeMille Award. And even into his golden years, he kept audiences hooked, clinching a starring role in 2018 with “The Old Man & the Gun.” That same year, he hinted at retirement, telling Variety, “I can’t last forever.” At the premiere, he got even more candid about taking a final bow. “The truth is that I really do feel that it’s time for me to move into retirement. I’ve been doing this since I was 21. I’ve put my soul and heart into it over the years,” he admitted. “I thought, ‘That’s enough. Why don’t you quit while you’re a little bit ahead? Don’t wait for the bell to toll. Just get out.'”
But it turns out retirement didn’t quite agree with him. Shortly after he shared that he was down to ditch Tinseltown for good, Redford realized he wasn’t totally ready to leave it all behind. However, the projects didn’t roll in as he might’ve hoped, and instead of a grand encore, he found himself grieving the loss of his son.
He experienced a devastating loss after announcing his retirement
Robert Redford didn’t exactly stick to his plan when he announced he was retiring. Almost immediately after declaring his Hollywood exit, he admitted he still had a little gas left in the tank. “I think it was a mistake to say that I was retiring because you never know,” he told People, adding that if he did step away, it wouldn’t involve much acting. “It did feel like it was time maybe, to concentrate on another category.”
But life had other plans. In 2020, as Redford was easing into his semi-retirement, his son James passed away from bile-duct cancer. As you can imagine, the loss was devastating. James was the second child Redford had lost — his eldest, Scott, died from sudden infant death syndrome at just two months old. “The grief is immeasurable with the loss of a child. Jamie was a loving son, husband and father,” he said in a statement obtained by CNN. “His legacy lives on through his children, art, filmmaking and devoted passion to conservation and the environment.”
These days, Redford hasn’t exactly rekindled the creative flame he thought he might. As of this writing, he made a cameo in “Avengers: Endgame” and stayed involved as an executive producer on a few projects, including the series “Dark Winds.” He’s also reportedly been working on “109 East Palace,” a film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, since 2019. “Moving on doesn’t mean you retire,” he explained to USA Today. “When you really, really talk about retirement, you’re talking about something stopping. … For me, [this means] going back to my artwork and directing.”
