The Electric Horseman, 1979.

Robert Redford confirms retirement from acting

The Old Man & the Gun will feature the star’s final big-screen role after a 60-year career – but he may carry on directing

Andrew Pulver
Monday 6 August 2018

Robert Redford has confirmed he will retire from acting with the completion of his forthcoming film, The Old Man & the Gun.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Redford, 81, said: “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. I thought, ‘Well, that’s enough.’ And why not go out with something that’s very upbeat and positive?”

The Great Gatsby, 1974

In 2016 Redford had suggested he had two more acting roles in the works, after which he would quit. Our Souls at Night, a romance in which he starred opposite Jane Fonda, was released on Netflix in September 2017, while The Old Man & the Gun, a crime comedy directed by A Ghost Story’s David Lowery, in which Redford plays career criminal and veteran escape artist Forrest Tucker, is due for release in September after a premiere at the Toronto film festival.

Redford has been acting since 1960, when he appeared in a string of TV shows and gained a small role in basketball drama Tall Story. His profile steadily increased through the decade in films such as The Chase and Barefoot in the Park, before scoring a huge hit opposite Paul Newman in 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. His second collaboration with Newman, 1973’s The Sting, remains his biggest box-office success, and brought his only Oscar nomination for acting to date. (He lost to Jack Lemmon for Save the Tiger.) He was given an honorary Oscar in 2001.

The Horse Whisperer, 1998.

Redford developed a parallel career as a director, winning a best director Oscar in 1980 for Ordinary People and receiving a nomination in 1994 for Quiz Show. He also co-founded what was to become the Sundance film festival in 1978 and is currently president of the allied Sundance Institute. When asked whether he intends to continue directing, Redford said: “We’ll see about that.”

THE GUARDIAN