Meryl Streep called him a lion. Marlee Matlin said he was a genius. To Ron Howard, he was a tremendously influential cultural figure.
After news broke on Tuesday of the death of Robert Redford — the Oscar-winning actor, director and producer who also nurtured the independent film movement through his Sundance Film Festival — tributes from his Hollywood friends and colleagues flooded in.
The testimonies celebrated not only Redford’s commitment as a filmmaker and an activist but also his loyalty as a friend and a mentor.
Barbra Streisand
Streisand said in a statement on Instagram that when she and Redford starred together in the 1973 film “The Way We Were,” which won two Oscars, every day on set was “exciting, intense and pure joy.”
In many ways, they were opposites, she said, but a friendship grew. “Bob was charismatic, intelligent, intense, always interesting — and one of the finest actors ever,” she said. “He was one of a kind and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him.”
The last time she saw Redford, Streisand said, they chatted about art over lunch, deciding to send each other their drawings.
Jane Fonda
Fonda, a frequent Redford collaborator, starring with him in films including “The Chase” (1966), “Barefoot in the Park” (1967), and “Our Souls at Night” (2017), said in a statement that Redford’s death had hit her hard.
“I can’t stop crying,” she said. “He meant a lot to me and was a beautiful person in every way. He stood for an America we have to keep fighting for.”
Morgan Freeman
Freeman recalled that when working with Redford in “Brubaker,” a crime drama from 1980, the two actors “instantly became friends.”
“There were certain people you know that you’re going to click with,” Freeman said on X. Referring to another drama released in 2005, he added, “Working with him again in ‘An Unfinished Life’ was a dream come true.”
Meryl Streep
Streep, who starred with Redford in “Out of Africa” (1985), the period drama set in 20th-century colonial Kenya that won seven Oscars, called Redford a “lovely friend.” In a brief statement, she added that “one of the lions has passed.”
Jane Alexander
Alexander, who also worked with Redford in “Brubaker,” as well as in the Watergate drama “All the President’s Men,” said in a statement that Redford was nothing less than a giant.
“There is no one I worked with that I admired more than Bob Redford,” she said. “He made ‘All the President’s Men’ possible and approved my being in it, which was the beginning of a long friendship.”
Alexander also pointed to Redford’s work outside Hollywood. “Most of all, he did more for environmental causes than anyone I knew through the Natural Resources Defense Council,” she said. “We bonded on that, a love of the West, and chocolate.”
Elizabeth McGovern
When the Redford-directed “Ordinary People” premiered in 1980 — and went on to win four Oscars — McGovern had few acting credits. But, she recalled in a statement, Redford took a shot on her.
“His intelligence, empathy and understanding, not only as a filmmaker, but also as a person have been difficult to match,” she said. “When we shot ‘Ordinary People,’ he did my scenes on the weekend so that I could attend the Juilliard School during the week. This was the kind of caring person he was. I revered him then; I revere him now.”
Ron Howard
Howard said on X that Redford’s creative choices as an actor, director and producer — and his cultivation of the Sundance Film Festival — had made Redford a “tremendously influential cultural figure.” Howard praised Sundance as having “supercharged America’s independent film movement.”
Marlee Matlin
Matlin, the deaf actress and activist, said on social media that “CODA,” which she starred in and which won three Academy Awards in 2022, credited the Sundance festival with bringing the film to the attention of Hollywood.
“A genius has passed,” she said.
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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