Robert Redford’s Many Types of Heroes

What does a hero look like?

By the time Robert Redford and his smile sauntered onscreen in the 1960s, that was not a simple question to answer. The movie business was in a state of upheaval, and the world was, too. The Production Code, which had long dictated who the good guys and bad guys were and how you could tell them apart, was fading out of relevance. Political and social unrest led a rising generation to believe those binaries weren’t so clear-cut off screen, too.

Into that world Redford brought charisma and talent and a face built for leading-man roles, and for decades he embodied all kinds of heroes. Not really the burly action figure type, and not the kind constantly leaping out of planes; the Redford hero is more intellectual, more steadfast, more charming and, on occasion, a bit more devilish.

His extensive filmography contains multitudes, but a few of his most famous roles — or just the most fun ones — point to the ways Redford defined certain sorts of Hollywood heroes, and showed us how it’s done.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

The Outlaw

It would be no stretch to use the word “iconic” for Redford’s turn as Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid, in George Roy Hill’s 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Redford and Paul Newman, as Cassidy, tear up the screen as outlaws robbing trains and evading consequences, being chased by their own posse. This is a buddy movie in which its heroes, all-American romanticized criminals, are on the run for most of the film. Yet you want to be them. They reject societal conventions and the rules of right and wrong, and answer to their own sense of justice. The Sundance Kid, with his steely nerves and composure, is an emblem of a certain kind of cool masculinity, loyal and unafraid.

No wonder Redford took his character’s name from this film and made a whole life mission from it, launching the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival to foster independent filmmakers and artists, a move that changed the landscape of American cinema. Sometimes you just have to make your own way in the world.

Read our review of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

All the President’s Men (1976)

The Truth-Seeker

Redford played the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward alongside Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein in Alan J. Pakula’s “All the President’s Men,” which hit theaters less than two years after Richard Nixon resigned from office. Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting on the Watergate scandal was largely responsible for bringing down Nixon’s administration, and the film vibrantly illustrated the heart-pounding pursuit of throwing facts at power.

Being a reporter is not particularly glamorous, especially when the most influential people in the world are breathing down your neck. But Redford made it look good, with the rolled up shirtsleeves and furrowed brow and endless legal pads, plus a dogged determination to verify every detail and knock on every door.

Read our review of “All the President’s Men.”

Out of Africa (1985)

The Romantic

Redford embodied a kind of refined, masculine elegance, and he put it to good use in Sydney Pollack’s “Out of Africa.” It’s a quintessential romantic lead role: He plays Denys Finch Hatton, a big-game hunter who begins a relationship with Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep), but resists committing to her fully. In this kind of movie — and in Blixen’s actual life, on which the film is based — the course of true love does not run smoothly. But this kind of romance can never really die.

Handsome and charming, capable and elusive, Redford’s character is the kind of emotionally unavailable male lead that Hollywood excels at delivering. He’s a romantic hero precisely because he represents a fantasy — the self-possessed lover who changes the heroine forever. It’s a role that fits Redford and his vigorous adventurer persona like a glove.

Read our review of “Out of Africa.”

Though Redford often played rugged outdoorsy types, there was a nerdy streak to some of his roles, whether he was portraying a C.I.A. analyst in “Three Days of the Condor” (1975) or a political science professor in “Lions for Lambs” (2007), which he also directed. But the most fun of his eggheaded roles is probably in Phil Alden Robinson’s “Sneakers,” a 1992 caper thriller that feels straight out of the 1970s. And while there are shades of Redford’s 1970s paranoia movie characters, this time the whole thing is played for comedy.

Redford plays a hacker and cryptographer who leads a team of computer security specialists. They penetrate business and government systems to prove that they’re not sufficiently protected. He’s a steadying presence, an experienced brainiac who is also a leader — in short, the kind of guy you want to trust, especially if you’re working with a team of oddballs in a high-stakes situation. He's a hero for what was, at the time of release, still a newly dawning technological age.

Read our review of “Sneakers.”

All Is Lost (2013)

The Survivor

Redford is not just the star of J.C. Chandor’s “All is Lost” — he’s the entire cast. His character, dubbed Our Man, is a sailor whose boat collides with a shipping vessel. Alone, he must fight to survive as the elements, the ocean and his own mortality stare him straight in the face. Redford barely speaks in the film, and it’s riveting.

This is a different kind of hero entirely. Much of Redford’s stardom depends on his charm and charisma, which by nature emerges when he’s interacting with other people. Here, though, he’s on his own — and he’s aging, too. Redford was in his mid-70s when he shot the film, his face wearing the marks of time. The camera often moves in close, letting Redford’s eyes show us what he is feeling and thinking. Our Man is an experienced sailor, someone who’s seen the world and knows how to move within it. In a disaster movie decades earlier, he might have saved a whole crew. Now, he has to be his own hero.

Read our review of “All is Lost.”

The Old Man & The Gun (2018)

The Elder Statesman

David Lowery’s “The Old Man & the Gun” is ostensibly the story of Forrest Tucker, a career criminal and prison escape artist who seems like he’s from another era. He’s a gentleman thief who prefers not to draw his gun, an elegant romantic hero who lives outside the law and marches to the beat of his own sense of justice. When he meets Jewel (Sissy Spacek), he charms her and woos her and begins, ever so slightly, to be changed by her.

This was the final film role that Redford shot, at age 82, and he announced it would be his last. (His appearance in “Avengers: Endgame” was filmed before this one, though the movie was released afterward.) While the movie feels gently elegiac on its own, it’s most meaningful as a summation of Redford’s whole career and all the kinds of heroes he’s been: the outlaw, the loner, the fighter, the intelligent adventurer, the irresistible leading man. That he chose for his final role to be directed by Lowery — whose early work showed at the Sundance Film Festival — feels perfectly fitting. From the Sundance Kid to Forrest Tucker, Redford played the Hollywood game but never quite by their rules, and his heroes were all the better for it.

Read our review of “The Old Man & the Gun.”

Produced by Rumsey Taylor. Videos: 20th Century Fox (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”); Warner Bros. (“All the President’s Men”); Universal Pictures (“Out of Africa”) Universal Pictures (“Sneakers”); Roadside Attractions (“All Is Lost”); Searchlight Pictures (“The Old Man & the Gun”)