Riding Away From The Limelight

As the Sundance Kid Robert Redford says farewell to acting with his last film appearance in The Old Man & The Gun, we look at the fascinating story of how this intensely private man became a Hollywood heartthrob

- Katharine Wootton

Whether he was whispering to horses or being a conman, Robert Redford has always had the most amazing power to draw us in – helped, of course, by his roguishly good looks!

But at the age of 82 this rugged, reluctant heartthrob has decided his latest film, The Old Man & The Gun, is his last starring role. While he’s hinted he may still pursue his love of directing, meaning he’s not heading off into the sunset entirely just yet, the film is the last time we’ll see him on screen, marking the end of a glorious 60-plus-year career on the silver screen. But all this nearly didn’t happen, as a boyish Robert Redford never harboured any particular ambitions of becoming an actor – never mind a Hollywood icon.

Born the son of a milkman on the fringes of LA, he grew up a scrappy child with red hair and freckles who no-one thought was going to be particularly remarkable, not least himself, he later told interviewers. Suffering polio as a child and losing his mother as a teenager, his adolescent years were turbulent, punctuated by too much drinking and getting involved in the wrong crowds, so much so that this aspiring sportsman lost his baseball scholarship at the University of Colorado because of drunkenness.