
Died at 89
male
Charles Robert Redford Jr. (August 18, 1936 – September 16, 2025) was an American actor, director and activist. Throughout his career, he won several film awards, including the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1980 film Ordinary People. He also received an honorary Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2002 and was also the founder of the Sundance Film Festival. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2016 he was honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Appearing on stage in the late 1950s, Redford's television career began in 1960, including an appearance on The Twilight Zone in 1962. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (1962). His greatest Broadway success was as the stuffy newlywed husband of co-star Elizabeth Ashley's character in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963). Redford made his film debut in War Hunt (1962). His role in Inside Daisy Clover (1965) won him a Golden Globe for the best new star. He starred alongside Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), which was a huge success and made him a major star. He had a critical and box office hit with Jeremiah Johnson (1972), and in 1973 he had the greatest hit of his career, the blockbuster crime caper The Sting, a re-union with Paul Newman, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award; that same year, he also starred opposite Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. The popular and acclaimed All the President's Men (1976) was a landmark film for Redford. In the 1980s, Redford began his career as a director with Ordinary People (1980), which was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning four Oscars including Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Director for Redford. He continued acting and starred in Brubaker (1980), as well as playing the male lead in Out of Africa (1985), which was an enormous box office success and won seven Oscars including Best Picture. He released his third film as a director, A River Runs Through It, in 1992. He went on to receive Best Director and Best Picture nominations in 1995 for Quiz Show. He received a second Academy Award—for Lifetime Achievement—in 2002. In 2010, he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur. He additionally won BAFTA, Directors Guild of America, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards.

Robert Redford

Elzéard Bouffier
for Elzéard Bouffier in The Man Who Planted Trees
Suggested by jakubduda

The story begins in the year 1913, when a young man who is the narrator was travelling alone on a hiking trip through Provence. The narrator leaves the shepherd, returns home, and later fights in the First World War. In 1920, shell-shocked and depressed after the war, the man returns. He is surprised to see young saplings of all forms taking root in the valley, and new streams running through it, where the shepherd has made dams higher up in the mountains. The narrator makes a full recovery in the peace and beauty of the regrowing valley, and continues to visit the region and M. Bouffier every year. The valley receives official protection after the First World War, with the French authorities mistakenly believing that the rapid growth of the new forest is a bizarre natural phenomenon, as they are unaware of Bouffier's selfless deeds. Over four decades, Bouffier continues to plant trees, and the valley is turned into a kind of Garden of Eden. The valley is vibrant with more than 10,000 people living there, not knowing they owe their happiness to Bouffier. In 1945, the narrator visits the now very old Bouffier last time. In 1947, in a hospice in Banon, the man who planted trees peacefully passes away.



