Robert Redford appeared like he walked out of the ocean to turn into a Hollywood god. He was bodily flawless. Pacific blue eyes, salt-bleached hair, a pleasant surfer-boy squint. Born in Santa Monica to a milkman and a housewife, his first reminiscence was of sliding off his mom’s lap on the Aero Theatre as a toddler and operating towards the sunshine, inflicting such a ruckus that the projectionist needed to cease the movie.
He undoubtedly grew as much as seize the flicks’ consideration. He wasn’t simply telegenic however proficient, though that wasn’t a requirement for stardom when he emerged within the late ’50s when the trade was scooping up hunks like him by the bucket for tv and B-movies. All a male ingenue wanted to do was smile and kiss the lady. It could have been really easy to do this a pair occasions and wind up doing it ceaselessly. You’ll be able to perceive why so many forgotten actors made that deal, with out realizing that ceaselessly can result in a quick retirement.
But when Redford had sensed at 2 years outdated that he was meant to be onscreen, by his 20s, he insisted he’d solely do it on his personal phrases. At 27, with almost zero title recognition, he horrified his then-agent by turning down a $10,000-a-week TV gig as a strait-laced psychiatrist to do a Mike Nichols theater manufacturing for simply $110. His rejection of the straightforward cash was an uncommon selection, significantly for a cash-strapped father of two.
To understand Redford absolutely, we’ve to applaud not solely the work he did however the easy, feel-good roles he rejected. He might have turn into a celeb with out breaking a sweat because the conflict hero, the jock, the husband, the cowboy, the American splendid made incarnate. But, he had the uncommon means to sidestep what audiences thought we needed from him to as an alternative give us one thing we didn’t know we wanted: egocentric victors (“Downhill Racer”), self-destructive veterans (“The Great Waldo Pepper”) and tragic males who did all the pieces proper and nonetheless failed (2013’s “All Is Lost”).
In spirit, Redford by no means strayed removed from the teenager insurgent he’d been — a truant who’d skipped faculty, stole booze and crashed race automobiles — and the novel artist he hurled himself into changing into by quitting all the pieces conventional (the soccer staff, his fraternity, faculty altogether) to maneuver to Paris the place he took up oil portray and marched towards the Soviets. He might need excelled on the sleazy roles that made Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino well-known. On the surface, he knew they didn’t match, both.
Typically Redford mentioned no even after I want he’d have mentioned sure. Think about if he’d agreed to face off towards Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” As a substitute, he advised Nichols he’d reasonably tangle with Anne Bancroft in “The Graduate,” solely to be rejected as too good-looking for the position. “Can you honestly imagine a guy like you having difficulty seducing a woman?” Nichols advised him.
As a substitute, Redford used his all-American attractiveness to make us query our flattering picture of ourselves. Within the 1974 adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” he was the primary individual you’d consider to play the title position as a result of he absolutely understood the purpose of the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ebook — the way it felt to characterize our nation’s complete picture of success whereas understanding it’s a phony put-on. I think about him making a satan’s cut price together with his face, vowing that he gained’t disguise behind goofy accents and stunt wigs the best way different too-handsome oddballs do, if he’s allowed to make use of his enchantment like a Computer virus.
If there’s one factor that unites his roles, from 1966’s “The Chase” to “Lions for Lambs,” it’s his willingness to present the display his full charisma — to let audiences stare at him for the entire operating time of a film — so long as we’ll comply with ask what’s lurking in his underbelly. Most frequently, we’ll discover annoyed idealism simply because the second it begins to bitter.
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The movies of the Sixties and ’70s that made Redford an icon principally cleave into two classes: scamps and truth-seekers. (The latter can overlap with suckers and stooges.) His antihero crooks in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting” captured one thing in our nationwide id, our not-so-secret perception that it’s OK to interrupt just a few guidelines to get forward — that we are able to forgive a sin if we just like the sinner. I like how these films provide you with a responsible little tingle about rooting for Redford even when it means scratching off a few the Ten Commandments. (Thou shalt not steal except you’re Robert Redford, who obtained away with it during 2018’s “The Old Man and the Gun.”)
These days, the Redford roles I’ve been eager about are those the place his all-American enchantment makes us study all of America, good and unhealthy. The 2 that immediately leap to thoughts are his pair of political thrillers: “Three Days of the Condor,” during which he performs a CIA agent on the run from his personal co-workers, and “All the President’s Men,” during which he doggedly uncovers the Watergate scandal. Each movies imagine within the energy of getting the reality out to the press; neither is so naive as to suppose the reality alone will save the day.
However let’s not overlook “The Candidate,” a film that has Redford as underqualified political scion Invoice McKay, pressed to run for governor of California. “He’s not going to get his ass kicked — he’s cute,” his father (Melvyn Douglas) says. In the meantime, his personal marketing campaign staff cares extra in regards to the size of his sideburns than concepts in his head. Launched within the 1972, 5 years into former actor Ronald Reagan’s personal governorship, the film hammers house that superficiality could be democracy’s downfall — and the stakes are greater than who’s Hollywood‘s latest heartthrob.
Vice President Dan Quayle once said “The Candidate” inspired him, triggering its screenwriter Jeremy Larner to dash this off in an op-ed: “Mr. Quayle, this was not a how-to movie, it was a watch-out movie. And you are what we should be watching out for!”
In his later years, Redford became a filmmaker himself and I can picture him pulling Brad Pitt aside on the set of “A River Runs Through It” to whisper: You don’t have to remain in that pretty-boy field. Be happy to get bizarre. As an actor and director, Redford continued to create characters who uncovered our our hidden rot, whether or not in our purported nationwide pastime, baseball (“The Natural”), or in our precise one, watching tv (“Quiz Show”). His flip in “Indecent Proposal” as the rich man who presents to lease his worker’s spouse lives on as shorthand for tycoons who assume they’ll purchase no matter, and whoever, they need. When he finally signed on for a superhero movie, it was, fittingly, alongside Captain America, that upright paragon of advantage — and Redford performed the villain.
What Quayle missed about “The Candidate” is that in relation to a Robert Redford film, reality is rarely as plain as what your eyes can see. There’s all the time a deeper stage and there’s no assure that justice would win. In reality, I’d argue in Redford’s movies, it not often does.
