Born: August 18, 1937 in Santa Monica California

Real Name: Charles Robert Redford Jr.

Parents: Charles Redford Sr. and Martha Redford

Children: Shauna, Jamie, Amy

1st Acting Job: Broadway Production of Tall Story (1959)

Shot to Fame: After being rejected by head of 2Oth Century Fox, cast in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) after pressure from the films director and actor Paul Newman.

Directorial Debut: Ordinary People (1980) - won 1st Academy Award as a director. Also won a Golden Globe and a Directors Guild of America Award.

Goal Profession: Began as an aspiring painter.

Robert Redford is, as they say in Europe, "A man without corners." That means it's hard to grab hold of him, hard to draw a bead on him, hard to categorize him. The reason is because he's in constant movement. Just when you think you have him pinned down, he's gone, off to another role, another level, another life.

The Actor

Take his acting career. Remember his 'blockbuster' phase? Hey, this was the original 'Sundance Kid.' We've seen him hanging with Paul Newman, singing with Willie Nelson and winging it with Demi Moore. His every film was a classic, on screen and at the box office. So we attached our first label to him: superstar. Just about that time, even during that time, he began his first metamorphosis.

Who can really pinpoint a date when Redford moved into 'statement films?' We're talking grey areas here, overlapping periods. Anyway, which film was it? 'Brubaker'? 'Out of Africa'? 'All The President's Men'? Who can say? Whatever, the shift, subtle though it was, was made. And these films held at the blockbuster level, a departure from such work, which often leaves audiences yawning.

The Director

When we finally zeroed in on that aspect of his career, he was off again, to the Director's chair. He didn't waste any time. Right out of the box, in 1980, in his first effort, he received Hollywood's highest honor, the Oscar, for 'Ordinary People.' That made him just the second Kappa Sigma to win an Oscar. Hoagy Carmichael (Indiana, Beta-Theta '22) won it for songwriting in 1951.

The Producer

Just when we'd accepted his behind-the-camera role, he was off again, into producing. In plotting his career, we were like so many artisans working on a complicated mosaic: a tessera here, a tessera there, but unable to see the entire picture until we took several steps back. Again, the line where acting and directing ended and producing began was blurred, so many colors run together.

He'd already produced 'All The President's Men' in the 1970s but in the 1980s he took producing to another level, starting up the Sundance Film Festival, thus influencing hundreds of producers. The impact of this group and his input earned Redford a citation as one of TIME Magazine's "25 Most Influential People" in 1996. To say Redford has revolutionized an industry is to deal in gross understatement.

In that TIME article, independent producer John Pierson was quoted as saying: "Sundance totally dominates the independent landscape." But this is no Koffee Klatsch. Redford himself calls the shots and sets the compass heading, saying: "There are too many directors whose entire frame of reference is television." Redford changed all that. Like some NFL Head Coach, he teaches, from A to Z.

Sundance

Redford says: "We invite filmmakers to apply to Sundance; there's a panel that screens and selects forty of them to come in the summer and work on their project with some of the best resource people in the business; and we demand things of them: What do you want that scene to mean? Break it down and talk about it! Defend it! What kind of shot do you want?" A crash course in film craftsmanship.

All the while, themes go through his work. Again, we recognize this only after the final assembly is dropped in our laps. This brings us to sports, a recurring theme in Redford's films. They say a good sports film is the hardest kind to make. Well, he makes them; commercial and artistic successes, every one.

The Films

He was hard-hearted skier David Chappellet in 'Downhill Racer,' hard-luck baseball player Roy Hobbs in 'The Natural' and hard-drinking-rodeo champion Sonny Steele in 'Electric Horseman.' Well, sports and Redford are no surprise. He played with Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale at Van Nuys H.S., just outside of Los Angeles. Redford played first base and Drysdale, not yet a pitcher, played second.

Even in those films, there was still another thread running through them, this one so big we almost missed it: a love of the Great American Outdoors. If we think about it for a moment, this is an almost constant presence in his films, from 'Jeremiah Johnson' to 'A River Runs Through It.' Now, some may have a hard time associating the environment with sports but the connection holds, and then some.

No less than Sports Illustrated takes this position. SI Senior Writer Alexander Wolff says, "Our activism on behalf of various sportsmen's paradises has led to cancelled subscriptions. But Robert Redford's take on sport - defining it expansively, and defending its purity passionately - isn't so far from ours."

The Activist

That brings us to Robert Redford, environmental activist. Again, another move so smooth we can't really say when all this began. But 'active' he is. It all started years ago, at the beginning of his acting career, when he purchased two acres of natural beauty, fell in love with it and named it Sundance. He says, "I bought Sundance to preserve it, and I found myself, like preservationists everywhere, in the development game. The only way to protect nature is to manage it like a business - in fact, to make it a business and devote your life to it."

Redford's love for the environment and his concern with what was happening to it led to his founding of the IRM, Institute for Resource Management,' in 1981. In the May, 1988, issue of American Health, in an article entitled "Redford, The Natural Organizer," William Kittridge detailed the IRM philosophy: "To help bring people together to solve important environmental and economic problems in the development-oriented American West."

Brother Redford doesn't simply provide lip service to this organization, he is the organization. He runs interference and carries the ball at the same time. He dedicates time, effort and his own personal charisma to its every effort. This means travel, speeches, shaking hands, personal appearances, management skills and just plain hard work into, as was mentioned, '...bringing people together.'

In all of this, Redford handles negotiations. How does he do this? Well, he 'produces' them! One 1984 meeting of IRM, regarding energy development on Indian lands, was held in De Chelly Canyon, a deep-red ravine in Navajo country. Attending were John Echowawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, Congressman Morris Udall of Arizona,-Peterson Zah, Chairman of the Navajo Nation, and Redford. How did it go? The Harvard Business Review, no less, reported Redford as saying: "Zah cut new deals all the way around and he said his success was a direct result of that conference." This is just one of hundreds of such success stories.

Of course, this isn't always easy going. When you take a position, you also take sides. And when you try for a compromise, you do so knowing that no one is going to be 100% satisfied with a 50% victory. Redford knew that from the start. He knew he and IRM were going to take some hits and suffer some losses. But that has not slowed him down one bit. If anything, every setback galvanizes him.

Redford is a realist in all of this, and that helps. He also believes he can settle many differences, between two opposing parties. He says, "Many (but not all) of business' top executives respect the natural world as much as anyone. They do not wish to destroy the environment, only to make a profit." On the other hand, he says, (Many but not all) environmentalists are concerned about the economic health of the country and the well-being of people who must work. To begin, let us search for common ground. We do not have to indulge in shoot-outs, good guys vs. bad guys."

So, the 'Sundance Kid' has his guns well-holstered. He doesn't need them. As the March, 1988, issue of Esquire put it: "Here is Redford: actor, environmentalist, consummate small-talk artist, cowboy charmer with a con-man's eyes, comedian, politician who can float through knots of strangers using a smile and a sentence fragment like some bump-and-run weapons that will assure him safe passage back to the remote privacy of hard-earned individualism. A grin and a wave; that's his AK-47 Assault Rifle."

In all of this, Brother Redford doesn't take on one problem at a time. He's juggling more ten-pins than a circus acrobat: oil exploration, water pollution, fishing and hatchery rights, the Earth's crust, toxic waste, air pollution, global warming, and so many others to add to that 'short list.' He's a whirlwind in all of this but he goes for handshakes, not the jugular vein, in every negotiation.

In these efforts, it's only natural that the 'naturalist' would break into other arenas. You can't take political positions and negotiate with politicians on a daily basis without becoming involved in...politics. All this from the guy who played 'The Candidate.' Whoa. What's this? Could it be? Have we missed something again? Were we looking one way while he went another?

Politics? Someone asked director Sydney Pollack about that. He said, "Bob is better equipped than just about anyone." He adds, "If Bob wanted to have a political future, nobody would have an easier entry. He's concerned with the most pressing issues of the times, such as ecology. He would be a valuable and viable candidate." He doesn't say candidate for what, but we can well imagine.

Are we overboard here? Well, in 1984, at a farewell news conference after the Presidential election, Martin Kaplan, Walter Mondale's chief speechwriter, was asked who, if anyone, could have beaten Ronald Reagan. Kaplan never hesitated: "Robert Redford." Would Redford consider such a project? Why not? Dealing from strength, he'd no longer have to go to others with his cause, they'd have to come to him.

The Future

So, what's about to happen? Can he make the full circle, from actor-director/producer to sportsman-environmentalist-activist to politician-candidate-leader? Again, we just don't know. We look at him like we'd study the Great White Shark. No, not as a top-of-the-food-chain predator. But, rather, as an enigma, in that he never blinks, never lets us know which direction he's about to take and is always moving, moving, moving.

By Dan Peterson, '55 Illinois, Alpha-Gamma (Time Life)