On Tuesday, Hollywood legend Robert Redford died at age 89.
“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,” Rogers & Cowan PMK chief executive Cindi Berger told The Post in a statement.
“He will be missed greatly. The family requests privacy.”
In his later years, the director, producer, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance” kid star and Sundance Film Festival founder took a step back from roles in front of the camera – his final film roles were in 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” and 2018’s “The Old Man & The Gun.”
Several years before his death, Redford announced his retirement, then later backtracked.
In August 2018, at the world premiere of “The Old Man & The Gun” at the Telluride Film Festival, the Oscar winner said, “The truth is that I really do feel that it’s time for me to move into retirement.”
“I’ve been doing this since I was 21. I’ve put my soul and heart into it over the years. I thought, ‘That’s enough. Why don’t you quit while you’re a little bit ahead? Don’t wait for the bell to toll. Just get out,’” Redford, who was 82 at the time, added. “So I felt my time had come and I couldn’t think of a better project to go out on than this film.”
He told Variety at the time, “I can’t last forever.”
The “Out of Africa” actor also told Entertainment Weekly in Aug. 2018, “Never say never, but I pretty well concluded that this would be it for me in terms of acting, and [I’ll] move towards retirement after this ‘cause I’ve been doing it since I was 21.”
One month later, however, the actor told Variety that he regretted announcing his retirement.
“That was a mistake. I should never have said that,” he said during another premiere event for “The Old Man & The Gun” in Sept. 2018.
“If I’m going to retire, I should just slip quietly away from acting, but I shouldn’t be talking about it because I think it draws too much attention in the wrong way. I want to be focused on this film and the cast.”
Before his death, he retained that spirit of focusing on the rest of the cast and crew until the end.
His final television role was a cameo in the AMC drama “Dark Winds.”
Starring Zahn McClarnon and Kiowa Gordon, “Dark Winds” premiered in 2022, and is a crime drama set in the ‘70s about Navajo Tribal Police officers.
Season 4 is set to premiere in 2026.
Redford and “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin both executive produced the show.
In a March 2025 episode, they appeared briefly onscreen as two inmates playing chess in jail.
Chris Eyre, who directed the episode, told The Post in March, “He was adamant that – I remember distinctly him saying, ‘Whatever Chris wants.’ As we said, ‘How do you want this, and how should we do this?’ [Redford] just kept saying, ‘Whatever Chris wants.’”
The director recalled that in 1995, at the start of his career, he was in the Sundance labs with Redford – who co-founded Sundance Institute, including the film festival, in 1981.
“He has always been generous,” Eyre said about Redford. “I think what he wanted was to give me that right as a director and a filmmaker.”
The shoot lasted about four hours, and around ten to twelve people were on the closed set.
Aside from Redford’s request to film his cameo with a closed set, the “All the President’s Men” star had no other stipulations. He left everything up to the director — including how his hair should look.
“We said, ‘Well, it looks good with this kind of messy look that has that signature look of Redford … like his great, familiar handsome self,’” Eyre said.
“Dark Winds” star McClarnon, who also briefly appeared in the scene, was excited to film it.
“I’ll never forget it. Zahn said to me, ‘I’m working with Robert Redford. Can you believe it?’’ Eyre told The Post. “And I said, ‘Zahn, would you be quiet? You’re making me nervous!’”
