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Thu 14 August 2025 3:30, UK
What is there to say about Robert Redford that hasn’t already been said?
He’s one of the most acclaimed, talented, and respected actors of all time, one of the few surviving icons of the very early days of ‘New Hollywood’.
Behind the camera, he’s also an accomplished filmmaker. He won ‘Best Director’ at the Oscars for his film Ordinary People and was nominated again over a decade later for Quiz Show. Oh, and he also helped found the Sundance Film Festival, in case all of that wasn’t enough.
Speaking of Sundance, the annual celebration of film is named after one of Redford’s most famous characters. Harry Alonzo Longabaugh is better known as the second half of the titular duo from George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which Redford starred alongside Paul Newman. The role, a favourite of the actor’s, is one of the many that helped him make his name. However, had things gone differently, they might have made somebody else’s name instead.
Redford’s one-and-only acting Oscar nomination (crazy, right?) was for the 1973 film The Sting. Reunited with both Hill and Newman, the screen legend plays a grifter who attempts to extort a mob boss for big bucks during the Great Depression. Redford is fantastic in the role – he always was alongside Newman – but he only got the part because somebody else turned it down.
Warren Beatty was initially approached to play Johnny Hooker (Redford’s character), but decided that the story of The Sting was too close to that of his hit film Bonnie & Clyde. Hill was told to cast someone of a similar name value, so Redford was parachuted in. This isn’t too unusual, as famous actors pass on roles all the time, but what’s not so normal is that Beatty pulled the same trick again that very same year.
Warren Beatty in The Parallax View. (Credit: Alamy)
When Sydney Pollack was making The Way We Were, it was originally envisioned that Beatty would star in it alongside his girlfriend at the time, Barbra Streisand. Unfortunately, the leading man pulled out, instead turning his attention to a campaign to get Democratic senator George McGovern elected as President of the United States.
Once again, Redford was there to pick up the scraps, and he starred opposite Streisand in this classic romantic drama. As for Beatty’s efforts, McGovern lost to incumbent President Richard Nixon in one of the most one-sided elections in American history.
One year later, Redford appeared as the titular figure in Jack Clayton’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby. This was yet another example of a role that had been offered to Beatty first (and Jack Nicholson too), but he didn’t want to be on set at the same time as Ali McGraw, who was originally slated to play Daisy Buchanan. Redford has since confessed that he ‘hated’ playing the classic literary part.
If you thought this was solely a 1970s phenomenon, then think again. 19 years after Gatsby, Redford starred in Adrian Lyne’s controversial erotic drama Indecent Proposal. However, of course, he was not the first choice. “Warren was interested too,” Lyne told the Chicago Tribune, “But he flirts with things and then doesn’t do them. It’s more interesting with Robert Redford because he has a different image. You don’t expect him to suggest what he does.”
Hopefully, he wasn’t just saying that to make Redford feel better about getting Beatty’s sloppy seconds for a fourth time.
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