Robert Redford knew what he wanted his legacy to be years before his death.
The “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” star, who died at his home in Utah at age 89 on Tuesday, opened up about his legendary acting career in a candid interview with Esquire in 2017.
“For the work,” Redford told the outlet when asked how he wanted to be remembered. “What really matters is the work. And what matters to me is doing the work.”
“I’m not looking at the back end: ‘What am I going to get out of this? What’s going to be the reward?’ I’m just looking at the work, the pleasure of being able to do the work,” the acting icon said eight years before his death.
“And that’s what the fun is: to climb up the mountain is the fun, not standing at the top,” he shared. “There’s nowhere to go. But climbing up, that struggle, that to me is where the fun is. That to me is the thrill.”
“But once that’s over, that’s kind of it,” the “Sting” star concluded. “I don’t look too much beyond that.”
Redford’s publicist, Rogers & Cowan PMK chief executive Cindi Berger, confirmed his death on Tuesday. Although no cause of death was given, she revealed the two-time Oscar winner passed away in his sleep.
“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,” Berger told The Post in a statement. “He will be missed greatly. The family requests privacy.”
Several of his former colleagues have paid tribute in the wake of his death, including co-star Jane Fonda.
The pair appeared together in five movies across their respective careers, including “Tall Story” (1960), “The Chase” (1966), “Barefoot in the Park” (1967), “The Electric Horseman” (1979) and “Our Souls at Night” (2017).
“It hit me hard this morning when I read that Bob was gone,” Fonda, 87, said in a statement to The Post via her rep.
“I can’t stop crying,” she continued. “He meant a lot to me and was a beautiful person in every way. He stood for an America we have to keep fighting for.”
Redford’s final big-screen performance was in 2018 for the David Lowery-directed “The Old Man and the Gun.”
His last-ever on-screen performance was earlier this year during the Season 3 premiere of AMC’s thriller series “Dark Winds,” which he executive produces.
The “All the President’s Men” star, who was last seen in public in October 2021, opened up about his supposed retirement while promoting “The Old Man and the Gun” at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2018.
“The truth is that I really do feel that it’s time for me to move into retirement,” Redford said at the time, per Deadline. “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.’”
“So I felt my time had come, and I couldn’t think of a better project to go out on than this film,” he added.
However, the “Great Gatsby” star later backtracked and suggested that he wasn’t ready to step away just yet.
“That was a mistake,” the Hollywood legend told Variety in Sept. 2018. “I should never have said that.”
“If I’m going to retire, I should just slip quietly away from acting,” he went on. “But I shouldn’t be talking about it because I think it draws too much attention in the wrong way.”
