Robert Redford Dies at 89, Sundance Founder

Robert Redford died at 89. He was an iconic actor, director and environmental activist whose career produced classics including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, All the President’s Men and The Natural, and later acclaimed turns in All Is Lost and The Old Man and the Gun. He co‑founded the Sundance Institute and Film Festival, championed independent filmmaking and Indigenous storytelling, and served as an executive producer on projects including Dark Winds, where he made a cameo. Outside cinema he was an outspoken environmentalist who in the late 1970s helped create an institute to train professionals to mediate land‑use and conservation conflicts in the American West in partnership with Washington State University and the University of Idaho. He was mourned at a chairlift vigil at Sundance and honored by local organizations, and his influence on film and public life was widely noted.