Jane Fonda accosts Robert Redford, who died Tuesday at age 89, in a scene from “Barefoot in the Park.”
With flattery.
“You’re always dressed right, you always look right, you always say the right thing,” she runs down in the 1967 comedy.
“You’re very nearly perfect.”
Believe it or not, her Greenwich Village character Corie is venting her frustrations. Redford’s Paul, her stiff new husband, is too “proper and dignified” for her free-spirited tastes.
But it was Redford’s good looks and soothing, smokey voice — not to mention his direct and unfussy acting style — that set him apart in then-gritty Hollywood and helped make him the No. 1 star at the box office for three years in the 1970s.
His undeniable genetic gifts, however, were really just a useful key that opened a door to true artistry and innovation, both on and off-camera.
Redford’s masculine charm wasn’t at all boring, like the “Barefoot” bride perceives her hubby. Much the opposite. He was a complex, controlled and sly actor, who seduced with ease in every genre he touched.
“Like the greatest movie stars, Bob understands the power of restraint,” his “The Way We Were” co-star Barbra Streisand wrote in her 2023 memoir “My Name Is Barbra.”
“You’re never going to get it all … and that’s the mystery … that’s what makes you want to keep looking at him.”
When his blonde, swoopy locks and blue eyes were put on a Western sharpshooter (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”), a scrappy journalist chasing a dangerous story (“All the President’s Men”), a con artist (“The Sting”), a bank robber (“The Old Man and the Gun”) or a pervy high roller who craves a $1 million roll in the hay (“Indecent Proposal”), the contrast added tantalizing layers of depth.
Redford, as a filmmaker, was full of contradictions.
He was the quintessential Hollywood leading man, yet in the 1980s he founded the Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival, a showcase of independent movies meant to shake up Hollywood with edginess and risk.
It’s now one of the world’s major fests. And boundary breaking directors like Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh and Jordan Peele all got their start there thanks to Redford.
And, though seemingly made to be up on the big screen, the sole competitive Oscar Redford won was for directing “Ordinary People.” He had a real passion and vocabulary for all things film. His “Quiz Show” is another fantastic, compulsively watchable movie.
Later in his life, he spoke with some resentment of how his appearance was such a large part of his early days as an actor.
“I’m at a point now where I can really be judged now by the work that I do,” he said in an interview.
And Redford was. Even though his “Barefoot” fella was, as Fonda shouted, “very nearly perfect,” the real Redford had a career of unexpected surprises, like his most against-the-beaten-path characters.
“I must have been born with an outlaw sensibility,” he told CBS Sunday Morning when he was promoting his final film, “The Old Man and the Gun” in 2018.
“From the time I was just a little kid, I was always wanting to go away from the rules.”
