Robert Redford has had a highly successful 50-year career as an actor dating back to early appearances on television (most famously as “Death” in an episode of The Twilight Zone”), then successfully on Broadway and finally as one of the biggest movie stars of all time.
His acting career has included two outstanding films with Paul Newman, Oscar Best Picture nominee “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and Best Picture champ “The Sting.” He has explored politics with “The Candidate” and “All the President’s Men.” And he starred in Best Picture winner “Out of Africa” with Meryl Streep among his many roles. All of these movies and more are now featured in our photo gallery of his 15 best films (view above).
In addition to his acclaimed work as an actor Redford has been a major force behind-the-scenes in the film industry with his directorial and producing efforts as well as his pioneering contributions to the Sundance Film Festival.
In fact, Redford’s greatest cinematic achievement came with a film where he doesn’t even make an appearance — “Ordinary People.” That film was Redford’s directorial debut and it brought him an Oscar as Best Director and also won awards for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and for Best Supporting Actor, Timothy Hutton. He brought great sensitivity to this story of an affluent suburban family falling apart after the death of a son and the suicide attempt of another.
Redford was always a risk-taker and he made some daring moves with this film notably in the casting. For the role of the troubled, emotionally aloof mother in the film Redford cast America’s sweetheart Mary Tyler Moore. She was fresh off a seven-year run on the groundbreaking “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” as the lovable Mary Richards. Redford reportedly once saw Moore walking alone on the beach in Malibu and decided that he wanted to explore her darker side. He also made risky casting decisions with trusting the pivotal role of Conrad to relative newcomer Hutton and by casting Donald Sutherland (who had mostly played offbeat and odd characters) as the good natured and loving father of the film.
Redford would go on to have other success as a director with “Quiz Show” and “A River Runs Through It.” The latter also features some nice acting from him in his moving voice-over narration.
Putting aside his off-screen achievements, Gold Derby takes a look back at the best of Redford’s on-screen performances and ranks his best work as an actor. Click here to tour our gallery ranking his directorial efforts.
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15. BRUBAKER (1980)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Stuart Rosenberg. Writers: W.D. Richter and Arthur A. Ross. Starring Yaphett Kotto, Jane Alexander, Morgan Freeman.
Redford scored both a critical and financial success in this film about a new prison warden who goes undercover in his own facility to gain insight into how his inmates are being treated. The film also features Morgan Freeman in one of his first screen performances of note.
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14. INSIDE DAISY CLOVER (1965)
Image Credit: clover-Warner Bros/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Robert Mulligan. Writer: Gavin Lambert. Starring Natalie Wood, Christopher Plummer, Ruth Gordon.
Redford made a bold move in his fourth film role in the Natalie Wood vehicle “Inside Daisy Clover.” Wood plays an aspiring actress who marries Redford’s character despite the fact that he is secretly gay. This was a daring choice for a budding romantic leading man to take in 1965 but the move paid off for Redford winning him a Golden Globe award as Best Male Newcomer. Redford would later greatly disappoint Wood when she desperately wanted the female lead in his directorial debut “Ordinary People” but instead he chose to give the role to Mary Tyler Moore.
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13. DOWNHILL RACER (1969)
Image Credit: Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Michael Ritchie. Writer: James Salter. Starring Gene Hackman, Dabney Coleman.
Redford received strong reviews for this film about a member of the U.S. Olympic ski team. Roger Ebert said at the time that “Downhill Racer” becomes the best movie ever made about sports — without really being about sports at all.” Redford plays a character who can only really function in life when skiing. The character is a bit of a loner who can’t connect with other people. This would become a subject that Redford would explore in a lot of his subsequent films.
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12. OUT OF AFRICA (1985)
Image Credit: Universal/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Sydney Pollack. Writer: Kurt Luedtke. Starring Meryl Streep, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Michael Gough.
“Out of Africa” remains an odd part of Redford’s resume. While the film swept the 1985 Oscars winning seven awards including Best Picture, Redford’s own performance received mixed reviews. While the film received a total of 11 nominations and even won a few critics group awards for Meryl Streep and Klaus Maria Brandauer, Redford wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar for his acting in the film.
While the film was conceived as a vehicle for Redford by his longtime collaborator director Sydney Pollack it was Streep who stole the film and gave one of her most acclaimed performances. Redford was faulted for not even attempting the character’s British accent (while Streep of course did a flawless Danish accent) and for being a little awkward and tense seeming in the film.
It was an ironic twist that the film ended up becoming mostly regarded as a Streep vehicle. Streep has revealed in interviews that the casting process for her was particularly grueling and she was subjected to a huge debate as to whether or not she was beautiful enough to appear on film as a love interest to Redford. While the film itself remains a beautiful visual achievement with some great acting, Redford himself has done much better work on film.
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11. THE GREAT WALDO PEPPER (1975)
Image Credit: Universal/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: George Roy Hill. Writer: William Goldman. Starring Susan Sarandon, Edward Herrmann, Margot Kidder.
This depression era film tells the story of a WWI pilot who wasn’t able to perform aerial combat in during the war. He copes with his lost by becoming a barnstormer which means he participates in dramatic air shows featuring daredevil stunts and acrobatics. Redford is in full movie star glory as the charismatic pilot. The film also features an early performance by Susan Sarandon as young woman who becomes a wing walker in the air shows. Sarandon’s character’s fate in the film is a particularly memorable and disturbing part of the film.
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10. THE NATURAL (1984)
Image Credit: Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock Director: Barry Levinson. Writer: Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry based on the novel by Bernard Malamud. Starring Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger.
In the early 80’s, Redford took an unexplained four-year hiatus from movie making. After releasing both “Brubaker” and his directorial debut “Ordinary People” in 1980 his name didn’t appear on movie screens again until 1984 when he starred in “The Natural.” In a bit of film reflecting real life Redford plays Roy Hobbs a once promising baseball player who disappears after a bizarre incident where a woman shoots him. The baseball player returns to his hometown and childhood sweetheart (Glenn Close in an Oscar nominated supporting performance) and tries for a baseball comeback.
Redford is genuinely appealing in this film and uses his own movie star mystic to great effect as the mysterious Hobbs. The film features sensational Oscar nominated music (by Randy Newman) and cinematography (by Caleb Deschanel) and while its mystical elements put off some critics the film holds up quite well due to Redford as well as an all-star supporting cast featuring Robert Duvall, Kim Basinger, Barbara Hershey, Richard Farnsworth, and Wilford Brimley.
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9. THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975)
Image Credit: Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Sydney Pollack. Writer: Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfiel based on the book by James Grady.
Redford gives a nice appealing performance as a bookish researcher who is suddenly thrust into a CIA mystery. The film was made in the paranoid days post-Watergate and perfectly utilizes the unease Americans felt with their government. In the start of the film Redford returns to his workplace to find all his co-workers shockingly murdered. This sends him fleeing onto the street where he eventually encounters Faye Dunaway (in a particularly charismatic performance) as a young woman he kidnaps in order to use her apartment as a hideout.
Redford has a likable everyman quality in the film and makes an easily sympathetic center of the film. His scenes with Dunaway are among his best in terms of his ease at working with fellow actors.
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8. JEREMIAH JOHNSON (1972)
Image Credit: Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock Director: Sydney Pollack. Writers: John Milius and Edward Anhalt. Starring Will Geer, Allyn Ann McLerie.
Redford often cites this film as one of his personal favorites. This film also focuses on Redford’s interest on loners living on their own. Redford plays a war veteran in the 1800’s who takes up life as a trapper in the Rocky Mountains.
Redford had purchased a great deal of land including an abandoned ski area in Utah which was the home state of his first wife, Lola. A lot of this film was shot on his own property. This area of Utah would later become an important part of filmmaking when Redford helped to build the local Sundance Film Festival into a major venue for independent film.
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7. THE WAY WE WERE (1973)
Image Credit: Columbia/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Sydney Pollack. Writer: Arthur Laurents. Starring Barbra Streisand, Bradford Dillman, Lois Chiles.
While Barbra Streisand gets most of the big dramatic moments in this popular romance, Redford cemented his status as a sex symbol and ultimate romantic idol of the seventies with his role of Hubbell Gardner in this film. Streisand plays a politically active insecure college student who falls in love with aspiring writer and seemingly perfect fellow student Redford. The film follows the couple as they marry and eventually divorce while using the 1950’s McCarthy trials searching for Hollywood communists as a background.
The film endured a lot of internal strife when Redford convinced director Sydney Pollack to change the final moments of the film to make it seem like Redford dumps Streisand instead of vice versa. As originally scripted by Broadway veteran Arthur Laurents, Streisand’s character can’t accept Redford’s politics and refuses to continue the marriage if he doesn’t support her side in the infamous Hollywood blacklisting scandal.
As detailed in Laurent’s biography, “Original Story” Redford became insecure that his status as a romantic leading man may suffer if his character was dumped by the less attractive Streisand and he convinced director Pollack to cut a few scenes. The final film plays as if Redford leaves Streisand for another woman and not because she has lost respect for his lack of integrity in the political struggle. Streisand and Laurents were always unhappy with the way the film was finally cut.
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6. ALL IS LOST (2013)
Image Credit: Before The Door Pictures/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: J.C. Chandor. Writer: J.C.Chandor.
Redford won the New York Film Critics Award as Best Actor for this film in which he is the only member of the cast. The largely dialogue free film tells the story of an older man who is lost at sea and trying desperately to survive. (This theme of survival comes up in a lot of Redford’s films and his directorial masterpiece “Ordinary People” also interestingly focusses on the after effects of a boating accident on a family.)
Redford was a surprisingly left off of the list when that year’s Best Actor Oscar nominees were announced. His early success with critic’s groups and the Golden Globes seemed to point to a nomination but that was not to be.
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5. THE STING (1973)
Image Credit: Universal/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: George Roy Hill. Writer: David S. Ward. Starring Paul Newman, Robert Shaw, Charles Durning.
This Best Picture Oscar winner brought Redford his only acting Oscar nomination to date. The story of conmen trying to swindle a mob boss reunited Redford with Paul Newman and director George Roy Hill who had all scored a big success a few years prior when they collaborated on “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
Redford is charming and likable in the film as is Newman. Newman however was not Oscar nominated for the film perhaps due to his past criticism of the academy and his wife Joanne Woodward’s open complaints regarding Newman not being nominated for directing “Rachel, Rachel.” Redford was probably also helped in Oscar balloting by having had “The Way We Were” also released in this same Oscar year.
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4. THE CANDIDATE (1972)
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Michael Ritchie. Writer: Jeremy Larner. Starring Peter Boyle, Melvyn Douglas.
“The Candidate” is a film that was ahead of its time. In it Redford plays the son of a former California governor who agrees to run for the senate when no other Democratic person wants to take on the popular Republican incumbent. Redford uses his wholesome good looks and likeable persona to great effect here as the candidate becomes increasingly popular and shockingly wins the race. The Oscar winning screenplay famously features the last line of “what do we do now?” which Redford utters to his campaign manager after he makes his victory speech.
One can only speculate how many political candidates have had this same reaction once the ballots were counted.
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3. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Campanile Productions/Newman-Foreman Company/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: George Roy Hill. Writer: William Goldman. Starring Paul Newman, Katharine Ross, Cloris Leachman.
Redford made film history when he teamed with Paul Newman to play the Sundance Kid to Newman’s Butch Cassidy in this blockbuster which was the highest grossing film of 1969. The film won four Oscars for Best Screenplay, Cinematography, Score and Original Song (“Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”) and also received a Best Picture nomination although surprisingly neither of the stars were nominated as Best Actor.
Redford is really delightful in the film and he and Newman’s comic patter and overall relationship made Butch and Sundance one of the most popular screen pairings in film history.
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2. ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976)
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Alan J. Pakula. Writer: William Goldman based on the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Starring Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Jane Alexander.
Redford teamed with Dustin Hoffman as Woodard and Bernstein the famous intrepid Washington Post reporters who exposed the Watergate scandal and brought down President Richard Nixon. This is a spellbindingly exciting film finely crafted by the great director Alan J. Pakula. Redford is assured and determined as the intellectual Woodward and he excellently captures the character’s determination to uncover the huge mystery of what went on in the Nixon administration. He is particularly compelling in the scenes with Hal Holbrook as the mysterious source “Deep Throat” who meets surreptitiously with Woodward to leak information on who perpetrated the break in at the Watergate Hotel.
The film won Oscars for its screenplay, sound, art direction and Supporting Actor Jason Robards and single handedly encouraged a lot of idealistic young people to enter journalism schools.
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1. BAREFOOT IN THE PARK (1967)
Image Credit: Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Gene Saks. Writer Neil Simon based on his play. Starring Jane Fonda, Mildred Natwick, Charles Boyer.
This may be a surprising choice as Redford’s greatest performance to some but his recreation of the role that brought him to stardom on Broadway is an example of comic acting at its finest. Buoyed by a genuinely funny script by Neil Simon and strong performances from Jane Fonda and Mildred Natwick (in as Oscar nominated turn) Redford rises to a level of comedy that he never really reached again on film.
As the conservative button downed newlywed lawyer who becomes increasingly frazzled by his more energetic and kooky young bride (Fonda) Redford is just perfect. Having played the role for nearly a year on Broadway with Natwick and Elizabeth Ashley in the Fonda role, Redford seemingly knows how to wring every laugh out of the role of the stuffy (or as Fonda says to insult him, “extremely proper and dignified”) husband. He is particularly excellent during a long exchange where Fonda and he aren’t speaking and only communicate thru an increasingly uneasy telephone repairman. His coughing and sneezing due to a cold he got from sleeping on the coach with a broken skylight above him only adds to the comedy. Redford and Fonda play off each other wonderfully and this early film role shows Redford off to great effect.
