Robert Redford

American film director, actor, producer, businessman, model, environmentalist, philanthropist, Charles Robert Redford Jr. better known as Robert Redford, was born in Santa Monica, California in born August 18, 1936). Founder of the Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford has performed in forty-two films as well as directing eight motion pictures in just over four decades. He received two Oscars®: one in 1981 for Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002.
While still largely an unknown, Redford made his screen debut in War Hunt (1962), co-starring with John Saxon, Sydney Pollack and Tom Skerritt in a film set during the last days of the Korean War.
He played a bisexual movie star who marries starlet Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover (1965) and rejoined her for Pollack's This Property Is Condemned (1966). The same year saw his first teaming with Jane Fonda, in Arthur Penn's The Chase, Fonda and Redford were paired again in 1967 in Barefoot in the Park and were again co-stars in Pollack's The Electric Horseman (1979).
Redford found his career explode in the 1970’s, after his performance in George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969 in which he was paired with Paul Newman. The film made him a bankable star and cemented his screen image and made Redford one of the most popular stars of the 1970s. During the years 1974-76, exhibitors voted Redford Hollywood's top box office name. His hits included The Great Gatsby (1974), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) and Three Days of the Condor (1975). The popular and acclaimed All the President's Men (1976), directed by Alan J. Pakula, was a landmark film for Redford for it he was the executive producer and co-star.
He appeared as a disgraced Army general sent to prison in the political thriller, The Last Castle (2001), directed by fellow political junkie Rod Lurie. Redford, a leading environmental activist, narrated the IMAX documentary Sacred Planet (2004) some of its most exotic and endangered places.
Redford stepped back into producing with The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), five years in the making, he returned to familiar territory when he signed on to direct and star in an update of The Candidate. Redford’s next film The Conspirator is rumored to release in 2010.