50 Fun Facts About Robert Redford

Robert Redford won his only competitive Oscar in which category, for the 1980 drama Ordinary People?

Best Director went to Redford at the first attempt, because Ordinary People was the first film he had ever directed. He never won an Oscar for acting, despite decades as a leading man.

In a 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone, Robert Redford's wounded policeman is revealed to be which figure?

Death poses as an injured young officer to win over a frail old woman who has shut herself in a basement flat to escape him. Redford was told it became the most-watched episode of the series.

Which actor played Butch Cassidy opposite Robert Redford's Sundance Kid in the hit 1969 western?

Paul Newman starred in what became the top-grossing film released in 1969. Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty had both turned down the Sundance role before Redford landed it.

Robert Redford's film Quiz Show dramatises the rigging of which real American game show of the 1950s?

Twenty-One was so tightly staged that contestants were told how to dress, which questions to miss and even when to mop their brows. Its exposure nearly finished off the whole quiz genre.

Which star of The Way We Were, opposite Robert Redford, also sang its chart-topping title song?

Barbra Streisand took the title song to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, and it also won the Oscar for Best Original Song. She played a campus activist who falls for Redford's golden-boy writer.

Which Washington Post reporter did Robert Redford play in the Watergate drama All the President's Men?

Bob Woodward was a part Redford lined up for himself: he bought the screen rights to the two reporters' book in 1974 for $450,000. The film went on to earn eight Oscar nominations.

Which Utah town hosted Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival from 1981 until its move to Colorado?

Park City gave the festival a ski-resort setting and a January date, a switch meant to draw more attention from Hollywood. In 2025 organisers announced a new home in Boulder.

In Indecent Proposal, how much does Robert Redford's billionaire offer for one night with Demi Moore's character?

$1 million is the price John Gage puts on a night with the married Diana Murphy. The premise came from a 1988 novel and made the film one of the biggest hits of 1993.

Which actress played Danish author Karen Blixen opposite Robert Redford in the Oscar-winning Out of Africa?

Meryl Streep won the part over the director's first choice, Audrey Hepburn. The film collected seven Oscars, yet neither of its two stars took one home.

Which rising star did Robert Redford direct in A River Runs Through It before acting beside him in Spy Game?

Brad Pitt played younger brother Paul Maclean, the part that brought him to wider prominence. Redford stayed off screen but is heard throughout as the older Norman, narrating the story.

Which English actor did Robert Redford cast as disgraced contestant Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show?

Ralph Fiennes prepared by driving to the real Van Doren's Connecticut home and posing as a lost motorist. He later called that brief meeting crucial to getting the man's accent right.

Which actor gained 25 pounds to play defeated champion Herb Stempel in Robert Redford's Quiz Show?

John Turturro also changed his voice to mimic the real Stempel, who worked on the film as a technical adviser. Even Van Doren himself said he enjoyed the performance.

Which fast-talking director did Robert Redford cast as a quietly menacing sponsor in Quiz Show?

Martin Scorsese got the part because Redford wanted a tough character played gently. He reckoned the film-maker's rapid delivery would make the executive seem extremely menacing.

In Robert Redford's Quiz Show, which Best Picture winner is Herb Stempel ordered to get wrong on air?

Marty was one of the real Stempel's favourite films, which made the dive hurt all the more. He was told to answer On the Waterfront instead.

Which brand sponsors the rigged game show in Robert Redford's Quiz Show and wants its champion replaced?

Geritol was an iron and vitamin tonic, and in the film its makers fear that the reigning champion's ratings have levelled out. For legal reasons the script renamed the company's real boss.

In Robert Redford's Quiz Show, star contestant Charles Van Doren teaches at which Ivy League university?

Columbia lost him as an English instructor after he admitted to Congress that he had been fed the answers. His father Mark, a Pulitzer-winning poet, taught there for nearly 40 years.

Robert Redford's Quiz Show lost the Best Picture Oscar to which Tom Hanks film?

Forrest Gump won six Oscars that night, while Quiz Show went home with nothing from its four nominations. Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption were beaten in the same race.

Which actor, then starring as a TV doctor, plays investigator Richard Goodwin in Robert Redford's Quiz Show?

Rob Morrow, Dr Joel Fleischman in Northern Exposure, had rejected other film offers before this one. He read four of the real Goodwin's books to prepare.

Which network airs the rigged quiz at the centre of Robert Redford's film Quiz Show?

NBC made Van Doren a well-paid Today correspondent, then dropped him once he confessed. In the film, the network's president denies knowing anything about the fix.

Which director, first lined up to make Quiz Show himself, plays host Dave Garroway in Robert Redford's film?

Barry Levinson gave up the director's chair because he was committed to Bugsy. Redford then cast him as the Today host, liking his easygoing, casual manner.

Which playwright wrote Barefoot in the Park, the Broadway comedy that gave Robert Redford his stage breakthrough?

Neil Simon saw it become his longest-running hit, with 1,530 Broadway performances. Redford repeated his role as the strait-laced newlywed husband in the 1967 film version.

Which actress starred with Robert Redford in Barefoot in the Park, The Electric Horseman and Our Souls at Night?

Jane Fonda first shared a film with him in 1960's Tall Story, where his part was too small to earn a credit. Their final pairing came on Netflix 57 years later.

To which South American country do Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid flee in Robert Redford's 1969 western?

Bolivia is pictured by Butch as a robber's paradise, but the two outlaws end up cornered there by local police reinforced with army troops.

Which composer won two Oscars for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, for its score and its hit song?

Burt Bacharach won for both the score and the song Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head, even though Time magazine complained that his music was anachronistic for a western.

Robert Redford's only Oscar nomination for acting came for playing grifter Johnny Hooker in which film?

The Sting won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, on the night its young lead went home empty-handed. Redford plays a small-time con man out to bring down a crime boss.

Which ragtime composer's piece The Entertainer became a pop hit thanks to a 1973 Robert Redford con-man film?

Scott Joplin wrote The Entertainer in 1902, and the film's soundtrack carried it into the pop top ten more than seventy years later. The story itself is set in 1936, decades after the rag was written.

Which director wrote Robert Redford's film The Great Gatsby after Truman Capote's script was rejected?

Francis Ford Coppola wrote the second screenplay, and later complained that the finished picture failed to follow it. Capote had been paid $300,000 for a draft judged unusable.

Which actor played reporter Carl Bernstein alongside Robert Redford in All the President's Men?

Dustin Hoffman and Redford spent months visiting the newspaper's offices, sitting in on news conferences to research their parts as the Watergate reporters.

Which actor won an Oscar as editor Ben Bradlee in Robert Redford's Watergate film All the President's Men?

Jason Robards won Best Supporting Actor for the part, then took the same award again a year later for playing Dashiell Hammett in Julia.

In Three Days of the Condor, Robert Redford's character is paid to read books for which agency?

The CIA employs his bookish researcher, who comes back from lunch one day to find every one of his co-workers murdered. He spends the rest of the film working out why.

In The Candidate, Robert Redford's idealistic lawyer Bill McKay runs for which office in California?

US Senator is the job he is talked into chasing because the Republican incumbent looks unbeatable, which leaves McKay free to say exactly what he thinks. The screenplay won an Oscar.

What does Robert Redford's Roy Hobbs name the bat he carves from a lightning-struck tree in The Natural?

Wonderboy is branded with a lightning bolt, and a triple Roy hits with it knocks the cover clean off the ball. The bat finally splits in two during the pennant decider.

In which present-day African country is Out of Africa set, with Robert Redford as hunter Denys Finch Hatton?

Kenya was still called British East Africa when the story begins, with a coffee farm planted too high to thrive. Much of the film was shot near the real Ngong Hills outside Nairobi.

Which sitcom favourite did Robert Redford cast against type as the cold mother in Ordinary People?

Mary Tyler Moore was loved as Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, and the icy Beth Jarrett was a sharp break from both. The part earned her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

Which boxing drama lost the Best Picture Oscar to Robert Redford's family drama Ordinary People?

Raging Bull went in with eight nominations, the joint most of the night, but took home only two awards. Its director attended the ceremony flanked by FBI bodyguards.

Which pastime bonds the Maclean brothers in A River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford?

Fly fishing is taught to the boys by their father, a Presbyterian minister, on Montana's Blackfoot River. The film won the Oscar for its cinematography.

Which future Marvel star played injured teenager Grace in The Horse Whisperer, directed by Robert Redford?

Scarlett Johansson played Grace MacLean, a girl recovering from a riding accident. It was the first film Redford directed in which he also took a starring role.

Which actor plays the mysterious caddie in The Legend of Bagger Vance, directed by Robert Redford?

Will Smith's caddie helps a golfer scarred by the First World War, played by Matt Damon, to find his swing again. It was also the final film to star Jack Lemmon.

Which country music star made his acting debut alongside Robert Redford in The Electric Horseman?

Willie Nelson played Wendell Hickson and, by the director's account, improvised most of his own dialogue. A starring vehicle of his own, Honeysuckle Rose, followed a year later.

In Brubaker, Robert Redford's character enters a prison disguised as an inmate but really holds which job?

Warden Henry Brubaker goes undercover to see the abuse at first hand before revealing who he is. The film draws on a real Arkansas prison scandal uncovered by Tom Murton in 1967.

In which California beach city, home to a famous pier, was actor Robert Redford born?

Santa Monica was his birthplace, but he grew up inland in Van Nuys, where future baseball pitcher Don Drysdale was a high-school classmate.

Which disease did Robert Redford catch in a mild form at the age of 11?

Polio struck him at the age of 11, in the late 1940s. The success of Jonas Salk's vaccine against it was not announced until 1955.

Which president gave Robert Redford the Medal of Freedom, praising him as a leading conservationist?

Barack Obama presented the medal in November 2016. Bill Clinton had already handed Redford the National Medal of Arts two decades earlier.

Robert Redford's Marvel character Alexander Pierce turns out to be a leader of which secret organisation?

Hydra's man inside S.H.I.E.L.D. was cast partly as a homage to Redford's own 1970s thrillers. He said he took the part to experience a new form of film-making.

In which survival drama at sea is Robert Redford the only cast member, with barely a word spoken?

All Is Lost contains just 51 spoken English words, and its shooting script ran to only 31 pages. The role won Redford the New York Film Critics Circle prize for acting.

Which long-distance US hiking route do Robert Redford and Nick Nolte tackle in A Walk in the Woods?

The Appalachian Trail was the subject of Bill Bryson's 1998 book, which Redford optioned more than a decade before the film was finally made.

Robert Redford's final screen appearance was a Dark Winds cameo playing chess with which fantasy author?

George R. R. Martin was a fellow executive producer of the series, and the pair appear as detainees bent over a chessboard in an episode shown in March 2025.

Which heist-gone-wrong film was tried out at Robert Redford's Sundance Institute before its 1992 premiere?

Reservoir Dogs was tried out at the institute in June 1991, when Quentin Tarantino directed a short version of it as a proof of concept.

Robert Redford's film The Conspirator follows Mary Surratt's trial over the assassination of which president?

Abraham Lincoln's killing made Mary Surratt the first woman to be executed by the US federal government. Robin Wright plays her in the film, which Redford directed.

Robert Redford helped produce The Motorcycle Diaries, about the youthful road trip of which future revolutionary?

Che Guevara was a medical student when he set off across South America in 1952. Director Walter Salles credited Redford with being instrumental in getting the film made.