![\"Robert](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Robert-Redford-Actor-2017-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n
Thu 14 August 2025 3:30, UK <\/p>\n
What is there to say about Robert Redford<\/a> that hasn\u2019t already been said? <\/p>\n He\u2019s one of the most acclaimed, talented, and respected actors of all time, one of the few surviving icons of the very early days of \u2018New Hollywood\u2019. <\/p>\n Behind the camera, he\u2019s also an accomplished filmmaker. He won \u2018Best Director\u2019 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\u2019t enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n Speaking of Sundance, the annual celebration of film is named after one of Redford\u2019s most famous characters. Harry Alonzo Longabaugh is better known as the second half of the titular duo from George Roy Hill\u2019s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which Redford starred alongside Paul Newman. The role, a favourite of the actor\u2019s<\/a>, is one of the many that helped him make his name. However, had things gone differently, they might have made somebody else\u2019s name instead.<\/p>\n Redford\u2019s 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 \u2013 he always was alongside Newman \u2013 but he only got the part because somebody else turned it down. <\/p>\n Warren Beatty was initially approached to play Johnny Hooker (Redford\u2019s 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\u2019t too unusual, as famous actors pass on roles all the time, but what\u2019s not so normal is that Beatty pulled the same trick again that very same year.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n Once again, Redford was there to pick up the scraps, and he starred opposite Streisand in this classic romantic drama. As for Beatty\u2019s efforts, McGovern lost to incumbent President Richard Nixon in one of the most one-sided elections in American history.\u00a0<\/p>\n One year later, Redford appeared as the titular figure in Jack Clayton\u2019s 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\u2019t 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 \u2018hated<\/a>\u2019 playing the classic literary part.<\/p>\n If you thought this was solely a 1970s phenomenon, then think again. 19 years after Gatsby, Redford starred in Adrian Lyne\u2019s controversial erotic drama Indecent Proposal. However, of course, he was not the first choice. \u201cWarren was interested too,\u201d Lyne told the Chicago Tribune<\/a>, \u201cBut he flirts with things and then doesn\u2019t do them. It\u2019s more interesting with Robert Redford because he has a different image. You don\u2019t expect him to suggest what he does.\u201d <\/p>\n Hopefully, he wasn\u2019t just saying that to make Redford feel better about getting Beatty\u2019s sloppy seconds for a fourth time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Thu 14 August 2025 3:30, UK What is there to say about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,40347,16,15,122275],"class_list":{"0":"post-344122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-robert-redford","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-warren-beatty"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115027704916019030","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Revisiting](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Revisiting-Warren-Beattys-career-defining-role-in-The-Parallax-View.jpg\")
<\/a>Warren Beatty in The Parallax View. (Credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n