ROBERT REDFORD (Directed by/Producer/Tom Booker) has won wide acclaim for his work as a producer, director, actor, champion of independent film, and environmentalist. Touchstone Pictures' "The Horse Whisperer" is the first film he has directed in which he also stars.
Redford won the Best Director Academy Award(tm) for his feature directing debut on the intensely emotional family drama "Ordinary People." He was also nominated for an Academy Award(tm) for directing "Quiz Show." As an actor, he received an Academy Award(tm) nomination for his performance in "The Sting."
He has also directed and produced "The Milagro Beanfield War" and "A River Runs Through It," and served as executive producer and narrator of a documentary about the Native-American activist Leonard Peltier, which was released in 1992 by Miramax.
He recently produced the forthcoming "The Slums of Beverly Hills" and "A Civil Action," and has been executive producer for "The Dark Wind," "Some Girls," "Promised Land," "The Solar Film," the recent telefilm "Grand Avenue," as well as the feature "She's The One" which was the first completed film from his recently-formed production company, South-Fork Pictures.
A strong advocate of independent filmmaking, Redford founded the Sundance Institute in 1980, an organization "dedicated to the support and development of emerging screenwriters and directors of vision and to the national and international exhibition of new American independent cinema." The Institute is also the sponsor of the annual Sundance Film Festival, which takes place every winter in Park City, Utah. From its modest beginnings, the Festival is now the most important venue for the presentation of independent films in The United States.
Born in Santa Monica, California, Redford attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship only to leave school after two years to travel through Europe, studying art in Paris and Florence. Continuing his art studies when he returned to the U.S.A., he enrolled at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. At the suggestion of an instructor, Redford moved to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts where a passion for acting superseded his interest in pictorial art.
A small part on Broadway led to roles in several major live television dramas, and, in 1961, he made his feature debut in "War Hunt." Later that year, he starred in his first Broadway show, "Sunday in New York," which was soon followed by "Barefoot in the Park." It was the film version of "Barefoot in the Park" in which he starred with Jane Fonda, that first brought him both public and industry notice. Films that followed included "Tell Them Willie Boy is Here," "Little Fauss and Big Halsey," and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," which established him as a star.
Redford went on to portray an array of characters in a spectrum of films, many from his own production company, Wildwood Enterprises, which he founded in 1968. Under the Wildwood banner, Redford starred in "Downhill Racer," "The Candidate" and he produced and starred in "All The President's Men."
Other film roles include "Jeremiah Johnson," "The Way We Were," "The Sting" (for which he received an Academy Award(tm) nomination), "The Great Gatsby," "Three Days of the Condor," "The Electric Horseman," "Brubaker," "The Natural," "Out of Africa," "Legal Eagles," "Sneakers," "Indecent Proposal," and most recently "Up Close & Personal."
