Robert Redford, an icon of the entertainment industry who founded the Sundance Institute and helped shape the independent film industry, died at age 89, The New York Times first reported.
“Robert Redford passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah ― the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” Cindi Berger, chief executive of the public relations firm Rogers & Cowan PMK, told HuffPost. “He will be missed greatly. The family requests privacy.”
Redford served as a leading man early in his career before making a name for himself as a director, winning an Oscar for the film “Ordinary People” in 1981. He earned a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2002.
Among his iconic acting roles were John “Kelly” Hooker in “The Sting,” Bob Woodward in “All the President’s Men,” Roy Hobbs in “The Natural,” Hubbell Gardiner in “The Way We Were” and the Sundance Kid in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
In 1969, he opened the Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah, the same year “Butch Cassidy” was released. He was initially hesitant about the resort’s name — a nod to his character in that film — because he worried the film would be “a disaster” and felt using the term would be too “self-serving.” The group he was working with convinced him to use “Sundance.”
