Robert Red­ford: ​‘I’ve always loved the idea of the outlaw’

My favourite liv­ing movie star is look­ing at me. We shake hands. His gaze is direct. His voice famil­iar. Five decades on from his role as the Sun­dance Kid, he may have aged, but those eyes and that voice are exact­ly the same. Robert Red­ford is in the room. The attrac­tion of a movie star is about dis­tance; it’s in the name. True stars are stratos­pher­ic, unre­al, impos­si­ble. When they clap eyes on you, and shake your hand, it cross­es the cir­cuits in your brain. Red­ford, with his black long-sleeved shirt and dark jeans, that famous head of light, straw­ber­ry blonde hair, is now tak­ing a seat next to David Low­ery, the direc­tor of The Old Man & the Gun.

A few months ago, in the run-up to the film’s release, Red­ford announced his retire­ment from act­ing. He’s now 82, with an Acad­e­my Award for Best Direc­tor and the cre­ation of the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val among his achieve­ments – in addi­tion to a half-cen­tu­ry career on the sil­ver screen. It was Red­ford who first dis­cov­ered the true sto­ry of sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an bank rob­ber For­rest Tuck­er while flip­ping through the New York­er. Tuck­er was a man with dozens of prison breaks to his name and a pen­chant for blood­less heists all over Texas in the ​’80s. That it caught the atten­tion of a life­long play­er of movie out­laws seems like serendip­i­ty. Butch Cas­sidy and the Sun­dance Kid was not Redford’s first movie, but it was the one that plant­ed him in the col­lec­tive con­scious­ness and made him a superstar.

“I’ve always loved the idea of the out­law, since I was a kid,” he says. ​“I think I grew up with that sen­si­bil­i­ty. I wasn’t out to break the law, but I was not want­i­ng to live with­in the law too much, so that was always in my head. When I was very young, I got into trou­ble that way – not hor­ri­ble trou­ble, but just enough trou­ble. I out­grew that, but what I didn’t out­grow was [the idea] that there was some­thing to be said about the out­law. Some­thing that was real­ly Amer­i­can about it. I didn’t put that into that per­spec­tive then, but it was some­thing I was drawn to.”

Redford’s appeal has always had a hint of myth­ic Amer­i­cana to it. From The Sting to The Way We Were, his com­mer­cial films have often been crowd-pleas­ing glam­our vehi­cles, and The Old Man & the Gun cleaves to that for­mu­la with­out too much dis­sent. ​“One of the things I liked about The Old Man & the Gun was that it remind­ed me of some­thing in the past. I didn’t know what. Just a vibe that I got that made it so much fun. And also the idea that you had fel­low actors who were your accom­plices. It made it all the bet­ter because you had peo­ple who were in it for the same rea­sons you were.”

Low­ery, who worked with Red­ford on the 2016 fam­i­ly film Pete’s Drag­on, seemed to be an ide­al fit for this mate­r­i­al, so Red­ford cor­ralled him into writ­ing the screen­play. Asked what drew him to Low­ery, he says, ​“I thought he had a unique pro­file. He came through our film­mak­ers’ lab at Sun­dance, and that’s when I first became aware of him. He had a unique POV about film and that’s always pret­ty impor­tant to me. We pre­miered Ain’t Them Bod­ies Saints and I thought his work was real­ly interesting.”

Low­ery is equal­ly in awe of ​‘Bob’. ​“He loves the craft of act­ing and cre­at­ing char­ac­ters. For him, it’s always a bal­ance of giv­ing the pub­lic what they want when they go to see a Robert Red­ford movie, and doing some­thing that is artis­ti­cal­ly sat­is­fy­ing. He likes to thwart expec­ta­tions while also hon­our­ing them, and to use a cliché, to march to the beat of his own drum.”

Over the years, Red­ford has been a love object and foil to a raft of incred­i­ble women: Natal­ie Wood, Jane Fon­da and Bar­bra Streisand among them. Hol­ly­wood has changed since those women first strug­gled through the deeply sex­ist indus­try of the ​’60s and ​’70s. Red­ford acknowl­edges that things were hard­er then. ​“Jane, espe­cial­ly, played a role in jar­ring things loose. I have a long his­to­ry with Jane which I’m very hap­py about. She’s been a joy to work with. She’s an actress where we didn’t have to dis­cuss much – things just fell into place.

“She cer­tain­ly played a role in rear­rang­ing the role of women in film. And I think that’s now pro­gress­ing rapid­ly. I think it’s all very healthy. Now we have the #MeToo move­ment, which is kind of jar­ring things around a bit. So you have women play­ing a big­ger role, which I think is great – I’m all for that – and giv­ing them more of a voice. It’s a process right now that will devel­op over time and we’ll see how it con­tin­ues to grow.”

Then, Red­ford asks me a ques­tion. ​“What’s your… back­ground? Your her­itage? I’m curi­ous.” I say I’m half-Greek. Inward­ly, I revert to a minor pan­ic at being asked a per­son­al ques­tion. I sud­den­ly recall that this is the man who once made Sis­sy Spacek so gid­dy when they met that she acci­den­tal­ly called him ​‘Bobert’. Jane Fon­da, at the height of her bomb­shell days, admit­ted that when they act­ed togeth­er she some­times for­got her lines.

Mean­while, Red­ford is greet­ing me in Greek. ​“I love Greece. I spent time with my fam­i­ly there years ago, in Her­ak­lion. I did fall a bit too much in love with retsi­na, though,” he says. We all three launch into a con­ver­sa­tion about ouzo – that’s how I end­ed up talk­ing about vari­eties of Greek booze with Robert Redford.

Decades of star­dom have giv­en Red­ford a cer­tain exper­tise in sooth­ing flus­tered peo­ple. He seems to extend him­self to make me feel com­fort­able; it’s a kind­ness that’s prob­a­bly sec­ond-nature, but feels imme­di­ate­ly spe­cial. Before I leave, I ask to snap a pho­to, and Red­ford oblig­es. I won­der if I might be able to express some­thing, but decide against it. How can you tell some­one that you fre­quent­ly turn to their movies in need of uplift; that they per­son­i­fy the idea of star­dom to you? You can’t. So you leave, feel­ing cos­mi­cal­ly reward­ed that movie stars are some­times kind to young jour­nal­ists, and that even if they for­get all about this brief inter­ac­tion, they know you won’t.

The Old Man & the Gun is released 7 Decem­ber. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.