Robert Redford, the Hollywood golden boy who became an Oscar-winning director, liberal activist and godfather for independent cinema under the name of one of his best-loved characters, died Tuesday at 89.

Redford died “at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah — the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” publicist Cindi Berger said in a statement. He died in his sleep, but no cause was provided.

After rising to stardom in the 1960s, Redford was one of the biggest stars of the ’70s with such films as “The Candidate,” “All the President’s Men” and “The Way We Were,” capping that decade with the best director Oscar for 1980’s “Ordinary People,” which also won best picture in 1980. His wavy blond hair and boyish grin made him the most desired of leading men, but he worked hard to transcend his looks — whether through his political advocacy, his willingness to take on unglamorous roles or his dedication to providing a platform for low-budget movies.

His roles ranged from Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward to a mountain man in “Jeremiah Johnson” to a double agent in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and his co-stars included Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise. But his most famous screen partner was his old friend and fellow activist and practical joker Paul Newman, their films a variation of their warm, teasing relationship off screen. Redford played the wily outlaw opposite Newman in 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” a box-office smash from which Redford’s Sundance Institute and festival got its name. He also teamed with Newman on 1973’s best picture Oscar winner, “The Sting,” which earned Redford a best-actor nomination as a young con artist in 1930s Chicago.

“I just figure that I’ve had a long career that I’m very pleased with. It’s been so long, ever since I was 21,” he told The Associated Press shortly before the film came out. “I figure now as I’m getting into my 80s, it’s maybe time to move toward retirement and spend more time with my wife and family.”

Sundance is born

Redford had watched Hollywood grow more cautious and controlling during the 1970s and wanted to recapture the creative spirit of the early part of the decade. Sundance was created to nurture new talent away from the pressures of Hollywood, the institute providing a training ground and the festival, based in Park City, Utah, where Redford had purchased land with the initial hope of opening a ski resort. Instead, Park City became a place of discovery for such previously unknown filmmakers as Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aronofsky.

“For me, the word to be underscored is ‘independence,’” Redford told the AP in 2018. “I’ve always believed in that word. That’s what led to me eventually wanting to create a category that supported independent artists who weren’t given a chance to be heard.

“The industry was pretty well controlled by the mainstream, which I was a part of. But I saw other stories out there that weren’t having a chance to be told and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can commit my energies to giving those people a chance.’ As I look back on it, I feel very good about that.”

By 2025, the festival had become so prominent that organizers decided they had outgrown Park City and approved relocating to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027. Redford, who had attended the University of Colorado Boulder, issued a statement saying that “change is inevitable, we must always evolve and grow, which has been at the core of our survival.”

Redford’s affinity for the outdoors was well captured in “A River Runs Through It” and other films and through his decades of advocacy for the environment, inspired in part by witnessing the transformation of Los Angeles into a city of smog and freeways. His activities ranged from lobbying for such legislation as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act to pushing for land conservation in Utah to serving on the board of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Redford was married twice, most recently to Sibylle Szaggars. He had four children, two of whom have died — Scott Anthony, who died in infancy, in 1959; and James Redford, an activist and filmmaker who died in 2020.

Redford’s early life

Robert Redford was born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on Aug. 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, a California boy whose blond good looks eased his way over an apprenticeship in television and live theater that eventually led to the big screen.

Redford attended college on a baseball scholarship and would later star as a middle-aged slugger in 1984’s “The Natural,” the adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s baseball novel. He had an early interest in drawing and painting, then went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, debuting on Broadway in the late 1950s and moving into television on such shows as “The Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Untouchables.”

After scoring a Broadway lead in “Sunday in New York,” Redford was cast by director Mike Nichols in a production of Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park,” later starring with Fonda in the film version. Redford did miss out on one of Nichols’ greatest successes, “The Graduate,” released in 1967. Nichols had considered casting Redford in the part eventually played by Dustin Hoffman, but Redford seemed unable to relate to the socially awkward young man who ends up having an affair with one of his parents’ friends.

“I said, ‘You can’t play it. You can never play a loser,’” Nichols said during a 2003 screening of the film in New York. “And Redford said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I can play a loser.’ And I said, ‘OK, have you ever struck out with a girl?’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he wasn’t joking.”

Indie champion, mainstream star

Even as Redford championed low-budget independent filmmaking, he continued to star in mainstream Hollywood productions himself, scoring the occasional hit such as 2001’s “Spy Game,” which co-starred Brad Pitt, an heir apparent to Redford’s handsome legacy whom he had directed in “A River Runs Through It.”

Ironically, “The Blair Witch Project,” “Garden State,” “Napoleon Dynamite” and other scrappy films that came out of Sundance sometimes made bigger waves — and more money — than some Redford-starring box-office duds like “Havana,” “The Last Castle” and “An Unfinished Life.”

Redford also appeared in several political narratives. He satirized campaigning as an idealist running for U.S. senator in 1972’s “The Candidate” and uttered one of the more memorable closing lines, “What do we do now?” after his character manages to win. He starred as Woodward to Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein in 1976’s “All the President’s Men,” the story of the Washington Post reporters whose Watergate investigation helped bring down President Richard Nixon.

With 2007’s “Lions for Lambs,” Redford returned to directing in a saga of a congressman (Tom Cruise), a journalist (Meryl Streep) and an academic (Redford) whose lives intersect over the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

His biggest filmmaking triumph came with his directing debut on “Ordinary People,” which beat Martin Scorsese’s classic “Raging Bull” at the Oscars. The film starred Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore as the repressed parents of a troubled young man, played by Timothy Hutton, in his big screen debut. Redford was praised for casting Moore in an unexpectedly serious role and for his even-handed treatment of the characters, a quality that Roger Ebert believed set “the film apart from the sophisticated suburban soap opera it could easily have become.”

President Donald Trump on Monday filed a federal defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, four of its reporters and Penguin Random House over coverage of his 2024 campaign.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, which covers the area where Trump resides outside the White House, accused the newspaper of attempting to ruin his reputation as a businessman, sink his campaign and prejudice judges and juries against him in coverage of his campaign.

The reporters and defendants are Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Peter Baker, and Michael S. Schmidt. Penguin Random House published a book by Craig and Buettner titled “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.”

The newspaper, the suit alleges, “continued spreading false and defamatory content about President Trump” and refused to recognize he “secured the greatest personal and political achievement in American history” with his 2024 win.

The suit singles out a New York Times editorial endorsing Democratic opponent Kamala Harris.

“The [editorial] Board asserted hypocritically and without evidence that President Trump would ‘defy the norms and dismantle the institutions that have made our country strong,'” the suit states.

It also points to three long-form articles in 2024 by the paper’s reporters named in the filing challenging narratives on Trump’s success as a businessman, looking at past scandals and analyzing his character as one that could move the Oval Office toward dictatorship.

“Today, the Times is a full-throated mouthpiece for the Democrat Party,” the filing alleges. “The newspaper’s editorial routine is now one of industrial-scale defamation and libel against political opponents. As such, the Times has become a leading, and unapologetic purveyor of falsehoods against President Trump.”

The New York Times said the suit is without merit.

“It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting,” a spokesperson for the New York Times said in a statement Tuesday. “The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”

Penguin Random House and the reporters named in the suit did immediately responded to requests for comment early Tuesday.

The suit includes letters sent by Trump’s lawyers to the New York Times and Penguin Random House in October, along with responses from the two media organizations’ lawyers. The letter to the Times demanded it cease and desist from making “false and defamatory statements” about the president, while listing a litany of complaints about Times coverage.

Newsroom lawyer David McCraw responded by defending the reporting in articles mentioned by Trump’s lawyers.

“Little needs to be said about the rest of your letter, which is principally a litany of personal complaints about The New York Times and its reporters, punctuated with falsehoods and premised on the deeply troubling notion that anyone who dares to report unfavorable facts about a presidential candidate is engaged in “sabotage” (as opposed to, say, contributing to the free exchange of information and ideas that makes our democracy possible),” McCraw wrote, according to the letter attached to Monday’s suit.

Carolyn K. Foley, Penguin Random House senior vice president and associate general counsel, responded to Trump lawyer Edward Andrew Paltzik: “The fact that the authors of the book do not share your favorable view of your client’s career, does not provide the foundation for a defamation claim.”

Monday’s filing seeks no less than $15 billion in compensatory damages for the alleged defamation, as well as unspecified punitive damages.

The reporters Schmidt, Craig and Baker have been contributors to MSNBC and NBC News.

ABC and Paramount, the parent company of CBS, have settled lawsuits brought by Trump and the president launched a new one against the Wall Street Journal and its ownership in July.