Actor, director, and Hollywood heartthrob Robert Redford hides painful scars from several tragic losses. In his childhood, his uncle and father figure David died in World War II, while his mother lost her twin brothers at birth. He lost two of his four children, one at 5 months of sudden death and another of cancer, at 58 years old.
Born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, little Charles Robert Redford Jr. liked painting much more than studying. At age 11 he had polio and, after rest, his mother Martha took him to Yosemite National Park as a reward. Since then, he has become a lover and defender of the environment.
“My mind was outside the window, he was drawing under the desk. “I think I realized that my true education would be outside of school,” the actor and director said in an interview with Time magazine in 2018 when he retired from acting.
For this reason, he saved up to settle for a year in Paris and Florence, where on the one hand he discovered that he was not as good an artist as he thought and, on the other, he learned about politics and became a critical activist in his country.
Robert Redford and his first losses
Since his father was very distant from him, the little boy had adopted his uncle David as a father figure. But when he was 9 years old, his uncle died in World War II. It was his first big loss.
Shortly after, her mother lost her twin brothers at the time of her birth and she died when Robert Redford was 18 years old.
Upon his return from his European experience, at age 22, he fell in love and married Lola Van Wagenen, a shy 19-year-old girl from the Mormon community. Although he had been expelled from the University of Colorado because of drinking, his wife convinced him to give up drinking and study acting at the Pratt Institute in New York.
The tragedies of Robert Redford
The actor was married for 27 years to Lola Van Wagenen, who was his great love and mother of his four children. The first, Scott, died at 5 months of sudden death.
His third child, three years later, was born seven months old, with many respiratory problems. Although he survived, Jaimes – a documentary filmmaker who shared his father's love of cinema – died at age 58 after battling liver cancer for two years.
His daughters followed their two vocations: Shauna is a visual artist, while Amy is an actress, producer, and director.
A Hollywood heartthrob
His first roles were in plays and series such as Maverick, Perry Mason, and The Twilight Zone. His great success A Sunday in New York, on Broadway, took him to Hollywood.
There, director Neil Simon, who had seen him on television, chose him as the protagonist of the unforgettable film Barefoot in the Park, with Jane Fonda. Shortly afterward came his definitive consecration, with his great friend Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Although his unforgettable roles in many films did not earn him an Oscar, he did get one for his work behind the scenes as a director. It was in 1980 for People Like One, starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore. Since then, he dedicated himself to both acting and directing until his retirement in 2018.
