The Sundance Kid’s legend lives on both on and off the screen. Here are some of our favorites with the ever-watchable Redford.
The Way We Were, The Sting, The Natural, All the President’s Men, The Great Gatsby, Out of Africa, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid — during his 60-year career, Robert Redford had no lack of star turns with staying power.
While he may not be closely associated with the western genre, it’s where he got his start. According to IMDB, his first screen credit was a 1960 episode of Maverick entitled “Iron Hand.” That same year he appeared in episodes of The Deputy and Tate (a short-lived series about a one-armed gunfighter).
Television kept him steadily employed for the next three years, as he turned up in westerns like Whispering Smith and The Virginian, as well as memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone and Naked City.
It was Broadway, not Hollywood, that gave Redford his first serious notice, when he starred in Neil Simon’s delightful comedy about young newlyweds, Barefoot in the Park (1963). Four years later he starred in the film version opposite Jane Fonda, but it was his next film that established Redford as a leading man.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
If you’re going to make one truly classic western and establish yourself as a star at the same time, there might be no better film than this. William Goldman’s Oscar-winning script was a superb blend of comedy, action, and pathos, historically accurate in the essentials but delightfully embellished in its portrait of the two most likable outlaws ever seen at the movies. Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Redford) aren’t portrayed as heroes or antiheroes: They’re skilled professionals whose trade happens to be against the law. They enjoy their work immensely and accept both the rewards and the pitfalls of the business with gracious good humor.
Newman had been a movie star for 10 years by the time he played Cassidy, and Redford landed in the same league with this one performance. So exuberant was their on-screen chemistry that they are still remembered as a great acting team, even though they costarred in just one more film (The Sting, another classic). A huge box-office hit, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid announced Redford’s arrival as the dashing “Golden Boy” of the 1970s, an image he fought against ever after.
Also lasting was the lifelong friendship between the Redford and Newman, who reportedly went on to play jokes on each other throughout the ensuing decades.
Above: Katherine Ross and Robert Redford in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969)
Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969)
In this tragic tale of “The West’s Last Famous Manhunt,” Robert Blake is terrific as the title character, an American Indian who kills his girlfriend’s father in self-defense and then goes on the run with his lover, Lola (Katharine Ross), in this film based on the true story of Chemehuevi-Paiute American Willie Boy. Redford plays Cooper, the conflicted sheriff charged with hunting him down. The injustice expressed throughout the story is aptly conveyed by director Abraham Polonsky, who experienced similar prejudice when he was blacklisted after refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. For his portrayal, Redford won the British Academy Film Awards Best Actor in a Lead Role.
Above: Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
Perhaps because of the fuss made over his screen-idol looks, Redford happily buried his handsome visage behind a scruffy beard and long unkempt hair to play a mountain man at war with the Indians who murdered his family. The Sydney Pollack-directed western was a hit, celebrated then and now for its stunning images of nearly 100 locations throughout Utah, and for the performances of Redford and veteran scene-stealer Will Geer as Bear Claw.
Above: Robert Redford in The Electric Horseman (1979)
The Electric Horseman (1979)
Western fans may detect thematic similarities with the Kirk Douglas classic Lonely Are the Brave in this story about former champion rodeo rider Sonny (Redford), who has been reduced to a gaudy gig promoting a cereal in a blingy light-up cowboy costume. It was Redford’s fifth film with director Sydney Pollack and reunited him with Jane Fonda more than a decade after they played newlyweds in Barefoot in the Park. Fonda plays Hallie, a journalist banking on an exclusive after Sonny makes off with Rising Star to free the horse from its tranquilized life as the company’s mascot. Today it may be best-remembered as the film debut of Willie Nelson and his performances of “Midnight Rider” and “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.” Reviews were mixed, but the public loved it, and it may well have signaled Redford’s future devotion to equine welfare.
Above: Robert Redford, The Horse Whisperer (1998)
The Horse Whisperer (1998)
Westerns romances don’t get more bittersweet than this saga of the love between married New Yorker Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas) and rancher Tom Booker (Redford). The two bond while Tom helps Annie’s daughter (Scarlett Johansson) heal after a serious riding accident.
Redford also directed the film, showing a keen eye for framing both wide-open vistas and achingly intimate moments. The move ends with a close-up of Tom as he silently watches Annie and Grace leave for New York. As one reviewer correctly observed, “Everything his character is feeling at that moment is revealed perfectly on his face.”
The American West (2016)
Robert Redford served as executive producer, with his Sundance Productions, on this eight-episode miniseries featuring reenactments of famous moments in Wild West history between 1865 and 1890, from the Gunfight at O.K. Corral to Custer’s Last Stand.
Dark Winds (2022—2025)
Redford’s final project was serving as executive producer for this popular adaptation of Tony Hillerman’s beloved novels about Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito of the Navajo Tribal Police, serving justice and solving crimes and mysteries in the1970s Southwest. Redford’s last screen appearance was a quick cameo in Season 3. Locked up in a Navajo Tribal Police jail cell, he’s seen playing a game of chess with his co-executive producer, Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin.
Read more of our February/March 2026 cover story: "That Redford Magic" or "Robert Redford: Golden Boy"
From our February/March 2026 issue.
Header: Robert Redford and Paul Newman in the 1969 buddy movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
PHOTOGRAPHY: Alamy
