Robert Redford: Ten Great Films From a Brilliant Career

Robert Redford, left, with Paul Newman in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Screen Archives/Getty Images. Cover picture of Redford in Malibu, shot by Annie Leibovitz in 1980.

By Daniel O'Brien

OVER the course of an illustrious film career which began in 1960, Robert Redford starred in more than 50 films and directed nine. He was nominated for an Oscar four times, won best director for his debut Ordinary People in 1980, and received an honorary Oscar for his contribution to the film industry in 2001. It’s an extraordinary body of work – here we pick our ten favourites.

1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Paul Newman insisted on the 

(relatively unknown at the time)

Robert Redford to be in the film.

Robert Redford defined his Hollywood stardom in 1969 with George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a film that reconfigured both the western and the buddy movie. Riding the momentum of New Hollywood titles like Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy, Hill’s film struck a balance between fresh storytelling and classic Hollywood style.

Playing opposite Paul Newman’s wily Butch, Redford’s cool, sharp-shooting Sundance creates one of cinema’s most iconic duos. Their charisma and wit onscreen are as striking as their arresting good looks. But this is also carefully balanced. Sundance’s inability to swim, for example, adds humour and vulnerability, humanising Redford’s star power. The final defiant freeze-frame is culturally iconic, while the film’s legacy lives on through the Sundance Film Festival, providing a platform for independent filmmakers.

2. Jeremiah Jonhnson (1972)

Redford’s portrayal of 19th-century mountain man Jeremiah Johnson tells the tale of a disillusioned figure retreating into the wilderness, seeking solace in the solitude, beauty and danger of the Rocky Mountains.

Sparse in dialogue and narrative, the film relies on Redford’s quiet authority to carry it. Very much a product of its era, it frames Johnson in violent clashes with both Native Americans and nature itself. Most significantly, it marked the beginning of Redford’s long partnership with director Sydney Pollack, a fruitful collaboration that would later include The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, and Out of Africa.

3. The Sting (1973)

Reuniting with director George Roy Hill, Redford teamed up again with Paul Newman for The Sting, a stylish 1930s caper about two grifters scheming to outwit a crime boss, played with icy menace by Robert Shaw – a stark contrast to the warmth between the leads. This time it’s Newman’s turn to wear the moustache, with Redford clean-shaven, a playful reversal of their Butch Cassidy look. With its clever twists, Scott Joplin ragtime piano score and screen-wipe transitions, the film won seven Oscars at the 46th Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, and earned Redford a nomination for best actor.

4. All the President’s Men (1976)

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford 

in All the President's Men.

Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men paired Redford with Dustin Hoffman in a serious contemporary role, dramatising the Watergate scandal just two years after Nixon’s resignation. A taut, uncompromising account of investigative journalism, the film showcases Redford’s range in a part that eschews glamour for realism and the pursuit of truth. Fifty years later it remains one of cinema’s most sophisticated political dramas. The project owed much to Redford, who approached Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein before securing rights to their book, and adapting it for the screen.

5. Ordinary People (1980)

Redford’s directorial debut, Ordinary People was a huge success, winning best picture and earning him the Oscar for best director. A powerful family drama about grief and alienation, it starred Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton. The film transformed Redford’s career, expanding his influence behind the camera.

6. Sneakers (1992)

Directed by Phil Alden Robinson, Sneakers let Redford dip back into the caper genre, this time with a tech-age twist. He plays a former hacker turned security consultant who, along with a mismatched crew (Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix), is pulled into a plot over a code-breaking device. The film mixes comedy, intrigue and early 1990s paranoia about surveillance, while retaining a breezy touch as Redford holds it all together with his familiar charm.

7. Quiz Show (1994)

Redford’s fourth feature film, Quiz Show, returned to his interest in public scandal – this time shifting from the White House to NBC’s 1950s game show Twenty-One and the controversy surrounding contestant Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes). Exposing how producers rigged the contest to engineer Van Doren’s success, the film probes questions of truth, media and morality, echoing Redford’s enduring fascination with power and integrity in American culture. Nominated for four Oscars, Quiz Show remains one of Redford’s most accomplished and incisive directorial works.

8. The Great Gatsby (1974)

Mia Farrow and Robert Redford 

in The Great Gatsby. 

Jack Clayton’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby cast Redford as one of literature’s most enigmatic figures: Jay Gatsby, the wealthy, detached, and obsessive dreamer pining for Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow). With his good looks and charisma, Redford embodied Gatsby’s allure, mystery and melancholy, even as the film itself divided critics. Lavish costumes and period design capture the excess of the Jazz Age, while Redford grounds the story’s glittering parties with Gatsby’s aching loneliness.

9. All Is Lost (2013)

J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost is an engaging piece of action survival cinema, with Redford at 77 proving he could still carry a film entirely alone. He plays an unnamed sailor in the Indian Ocean whose boat is punctured by a drifting shipping container, an accident that escalates into a fight for survival on the open sea. With almost no dialogue (just 51 words), the drama relies on Redford’s presence and physicality. Like Jeremiah Johnson transposed from mountains to water, the film is elemental and meditative, and Redford delivers a late-career performance of remarkable endurance, which earned him the New York Film Critics Circle Award for best actor.

10. The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

David Lowery’s The Old Man & the Gun was announced as Redford’s final starring role, and it feels like a fitting farewell. While he later appeared briefly in Avengers: Endgame (2019) and in the anthology film Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia (2020), this was the last feature he headlined.

Redford plays Forrest Tucker, a real-life career criminal who, well into his seventies, escapes prison and keeps robbing banks with a smile. The film isn’t about suspense so much as presence, and Redford brings the same easy charisma that defined his early career. Gentle, nostalgic and playful, it stands as an apt curtain call for a legendary performer and filmmaker.

Daniel O'Brien, Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex