In 1973, Robert Redford stood at the absolute peak of Hollywood stardom. *The Way We Were* became the fifth highest-grossing film of the year, and *The Sting*, released on Christmas Day, went on to become a global phenomenon, grossing $257 million worldwide and winning seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Redford was the most bankable star in America. Yet, while the public saw the golden boy of cinema, Redford was quietly conducting a secret campaign that would change American political history.
Beginning in late 1972, the man millions saw on screen was secretly contacting two reporters from *The Washington Post*, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, trying to convince them to let him tell their story. Redford’s initial call came in November 1972, at the exact moment the reporters were weakest. They had just made a very public error in a story involving H. R.
Haldeman, and their credibility was under open attack. When Woodward finally returned the call, the response was cold. The reporters feared the biggest star in the world might actually be a trick from the Nixon White House, or a prank meant to compromise their work. Redford backed off but did not give up.
In the spring of 1973, convicted Watergate burglar James McCord sent a letter to Judge John Sirica implicating the Nixon administration. The story suddenly looked viable. Redford pushed for a meeting, which took place in secret at a bar in the Jefferson Hotel, a short distance from the White House. Woodward and Bernstein agonized over the decision, worrying about how “going Hollywood” would look to their editors.
The deepest secret, however, was that Redford essentially made the book happen. He convinced the reporters that the real story was not just the burglary, but the investigation itself—the long chase, the frustration, and the two mismatched men doing the work. *All the President’s Men* became a massive bestseller, but Redford’s name appeared nowhere inside it. He received no credit in the acknowledgments.
In 1974, he secured the film rights for $450,000. The money came from Warner Brothers, tied to an agreement that Redford would appear in two more films for the studio. In effect, he gave away two years of his own future labor as an actor to own the story about journalism. Dustin Hoffman later admitted he had wanted the rights for himself but discovered Redford had already completed the deal.
Redford’s pursuit was driven by a deeply personal grudge. A 1976 *Time* cover story revealed that his passion for the film was shaped by a lasting dislike of Richard Nixon, dating back to when Redford was 13 years old and then-Senator Nixon handed him a tennis trophy. Decades later, the boy who took that trophy quietly assembled the film that would permanently attach the politician’s disgrace to the public imagination. There was another irony hidden on the set of *The Way We Were*.
Redford had originally wanted the film to be a political drama about the Hollywood blacklist and the House Un-American Activities Committee, but director Sydney Pollack insisted it was a love story. Scenes about political persecution were cut back or removed entirely. While standing on a set where a story about government turning on its citizens was being trimmed away, Redford was spending breaks on the phone to Washington, building a different film about the same theme. When *All the President’s Men* finally arrived in April 1976, directed by Alan J.
Pakula and starring Redford as Woodward and Hoffman as Bernstein, it received eight Oscar nominations and won four. Woodward gave the film the highest possible praise, saying it was not just “pretty damn true” but simply true. Bernstein said the filmmakers had done a spectacular reporting job to make it. Redford handled the casting of Deep Throat with extraordinary care.
He worried that if the source’s real identity ever came out and the actor looked nothing like him, the film would seem ridiculous. He asked Woodward directly if Hal Holbrook was the right choice, but Woodward could not reveal the truth and said nothing. Pakula took the silence as approval. The secret held until May 31, 2005, when former FBI official W.
Mark Felt revealed he had been Deep Throat. The year 1973 also marked the quiet building of another empire. Redford had bought two acres in Utah for $500 in 1961 and built a cabin with his own hands. By the late 1960s, he had acquired a struggling ski area above Provo and renamed it Sundance.
Throughout the 1970s, money from *The Sting* and *The Way We Were* flowed directly back into Utah land. He was literally turning movie stardom into mountains. In 1981, on land he had bought years earlier, he founded the Sundance Institute to support risk-taking new voices in film. In 1985, the Institute took over the US Film Festival and renamed it the Sundance Film Festival.
It became a major force in American independent cinema, launching Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Ryan Coogler, among many others. Redford carried a deep contempt for his own glamour, calling it a “real handicap. ” He privately considered himself a misfit and an outlaw. When offered *Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid*, he rejected the lead role of Butch and insisted on playing the Sundance Kid, saying he connected to the character because he had felt like an outlaw most of his life.
At the center of it all was a silence that had nothing to do with Hollywood. In 1959, his first child, a son named Scott Anthony, died in infancy. Redford was 23, unknown, and far from the fame that would make every corner of his life public. He almost never spoke about the boy.
In 2020, his son James Redford also died. Of his four children, Redford outlived two. He never turned private pain into public performance. Instead, as he did with Watergate and Sundance, he responded by making something.
He made his directing debut with *Ordinary People* in 1980 and won the Academy Award for Best Director. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 and announced his retirement from acting in 2018. Robert Redford died on September 16, 2025, in his sleep at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah. He was 89.
Bob Woodward, the same reporter who once wondered if Redford’s phone call was a White House trick, paid tribute to the man who saw the story before almost anyone else.
