yesu reddish hair is disheveled; the smile, bright. His features have softened with age – his skin has tanned – but Robert Redford’s magnetism still electrifies. “When you get older, you learn certain life lessons. You apply that wisdom and all of a sudden you say, ‘Hey, this is a new incentive to live. Ahead!'”.
He smiles and says, “What can I tell you?” And she starts. “When I got into show business, I had this innocent idea that I would let my work speak for me. I was never interested in talking about myself,” says Redford. “However, we are in a different time, and celebrities are in fashion. I could also get into that game, but little by little.
It seems that Redford is more comfortable talking about his life, although he is appalled at being referred to as a “living legend.” “That really pisses me off! -He says-. Does that mean they’re going to make me a bronze statue? Phew! I’m not done yet, folks!” Charles Robert Redford, of English, Scottish, and Irish descent, grew up an only child in a Hispanic neighborhood in Santa Monica. His father, Charles, worked as a milk delivery boy. One of the first memories of him dates back to school, at the end of World War II.
«Getting into trouble, bordering on the limit, stealing… it was my escape valve. I was going round and round and I was afraid it would end badly»
“This dark tendency to question the Jews began to be felt in our school,” recalls Redford. “I didn’t know what a Jew was. But suddenly people were whispering about who was and who wasn’t. One day Lois Levinson, a very smart friend of mine, got up during class and said, ‘My name is Lois Levinson. I’m Jewish and I’m very proud of it’. The class was stunned.” Over dinner that night, Redford told his father what had happened and asked, “What am I? If she is a Jew, what am I?
“You are a Jew, and you should be proud,” he told him. The boy ran to his room, crying. “I thought, ‘I’m lost,'” Redford laughs now. “I heard my mother say to him, ‘Charlie, please go and explain it to him.’ My father came into my room and taught me a lesson. He showed me how unfair what was happening was. He said: ‘We are all the same’ ». Those words marked him. “Any time I saw people being treated unfairly based on race, creed, or any other reason, he would irritate me,” says Redford.
A born athlete, he captained his school’s football and baseball teams. “I was never a good student. They had to drag me into preschool. It was difficult for me to sit down to attend. I wanted to get out, to be educated by experience and adventure, but I didn’t know how to express it.
He finished high school in fits and starts, flirting with trouble. “Getting into trouble with friends, pushing the limits, stealing hubcaps for $16…it was my outlet. For my family and teachers, he was a guy who was losing his life. He had problems with behavior standards. They made me nervous.”
His athletic prowess, however, earned him a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado, which he lost, they say, because of his drinking. “Part of it was,” he admits. After a year, the school management asked her not to come back. At the same time his mother, Martha, died at the age of 40. «She had septicemia after the birth of the two twins, who died at birth. I was ten years old », she says quietly. Her own birth was difficult, and the doctors advised her mother not to have any more children. “She wanted a family so much that she got pregnant again.” Her death was a heavy blow. “It seemed so unfair to me. But, strangely, her death also freed me, she allowed me to fly alone, something she wanted to do for a long time ».
“When my son died, I felt guilty. It is a wound that never closes.” The child was five months old and his death forever marked the life of the actor
When he saved up enough, Redford hitchhiked to New York and went to France. He had always liked to draw and decided to be an artist. “In Europe he would draw on sidewalks with chalk, and people would give him money,” says Duane Byrge, a film critic for hollywoodreporter which has followed Redford’s path for decades. Redford spent 18 months in Europe, where he, he says, “managed to mature.” He arrived in Paris in the 1950s, knowing neither the language nor the culture, and lived among a group of politically active students. «They questioned my political ideas, which did not exist! They were running through the streets to protest, so I joined them. That broadened the vision of my country. When I came back, I questioned some things and started some activism.
At just 20 years old, Redford returned to Los Angeles and met Lola Van Wagenen, a 17-year-old student from Utah. A beauty queen of Mormon origin whom he married at the age of 21. He was going through a rough patch when they met: depressed over his mother’s death, he drank too much and could just as easily tear up a movie set as get arrested for breaking and entering in Beverly Hills. In 1958 they ran away to Las Vegas, married, and moved to New York, where they enrolled in art school. “In the end I understood that I was going through a lot of laps,” he says now. “My inclination was always to go overboard. But one day I told myself that, if I continued like this, it was going to end very badly. And I decided to change my life.
On the recommendation of a teacher he changed to the Academy of Dramatic Arts. «He had never imagined being an actor. My idea was to have a comprehensive training in the art world to return to Europe and paint». But in that academy his life changed drastically. “Something made me realize,” he says. I began to see everything clearly.
He began to play minor roles, everything seemed to be on track when, suddenly, he fell apart. He and Van Wagener had a son, in 1959, who died five months later of sudden death syndrome. “It was really tough,” says Redford. We were very young. I had my first theater job, in which I did not earn much. We knew nothing about that syndrome. The only thing you think is that you have done something wrong. As a parent, you tend to blame yourself. That produces a wound that never fully heals.”
He and Van Wagenen had two more children: Shauna, now 50 and an artist, and James, 48, a screenwriter and director. Eight years later the couple had Amy, who is engaged in acting.
Today, Redford is the grandfather of seven grandchildren and considers his family to be his greatest achievement. “As a child, I was considered irresponsible. I think that made me develop a strong need to show that he was capable, that he had his head in his place. It had ingrained that old-fashioned concept that you should watch over your family. Redford’s artistic career took off in 1969 with the premiere of Two men and one destiny. From then until 1985 he starred in about 15 films, including The candidate, All the President’s Men Y Memories of Africa. Starting in the 1980s, he began directing and producing. With Ordinary people, his directorial debut, won an Oscar. In the film he crudely explored the dynamics of a family coping with the death of a child.
In 1985, he and Lola ended up separating. “And then I lived eight years of…freedom,” says Redford. Our man lived two consecutive relationships, with the Brazilian soap opera actress Sonia Braga and with the clothing designer Kathy O’Rear. Friends say this last relationship was important, but it ended in tears. To encourage independent film production and cultivate talent, the actor founded the Sundance Institute in 1981; which has become world famous. I ask Redford how he thinks he has handled the fame. “I did it the way I wanted,” he replies. I felt that if one was lucky enough to be successful, one should treasure it, but never believe it, because he has a demon side.”
Redford now shares his life with the German painter Sibylle Szaggars, whom he met at Sundance in the late 1990s and married in 2009. “She’s a very special person,” he says, touching his gold ring. She is younger than me and European, which pleases me and completely renews my life». “I still have energy. When it starts to fade, I can start thinking about age.”
Five keys to understanding Robert
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