Still going strong well into his eighties, Robert Redford is one of the last surviving
stars to have broken through during Hollywood's Golden Age. But despite a six-decade career,
the star has suffered many losses. Here are the tragic details about Robert Redford.
In 2011, the famously private Robert Redford surprised everyone when he agreed to cooperate
with author Michael Feeney Callan on a book about his eventful life. And one of the many
intriguing revelations which emerged was the actor's bout of polio as a child. Thankfully,
it wasn't a severe case, but even so, the future Hollywood star was still
forced to spend several weeks in bed after over-exerting himself during an ocean swim.
Redford would later pay tribute to Jonas Salk, the scientist who found a vaccine for
the disease, in a 2014 short film. The Oscar winner stepped behind the camera
to direct a part of Cathedrals of Culture, a 3D documentary about San Diego's Salk
Institute for Biological Studies. In a 2014 interview with Express,
Redford revealed what it was like to be alive when Salk discovered the polio vaccine:
"I was around when the polio epidemic was still a threat ... so when Jonas
Salk invented the vaccine, it was just earth-shattering news."
Robert Redford had those attending the Utah Women's Leadership Celebration at the 2018
Sundance Film Festival in tears when he paid an emotional tribute to his mom. Martha Redford
sadly passed away in 1955 from a hemorrhage at the age of just 40. Her death was linked to a blood
disorder she'd contracted during the stillbirth of her twin daughters eight years previously.
The Hollywood star admitted that he hadn't made things easy for his
mother as a teen but that she always stood by him, telling Closer Weekly:
"She believed that all things considered,
she just had faith that I had something in me that was going to turn out okay."
Sadly, Martha didn't get to see her faith repaid. Her son
would make his screen debut five years after her passing.
In 1954 Robert Redford began attending the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship.
During his brief tenure at the school, the future star built quite the party boy reputation.
In his 2011 book, Robert Redford: The Biography, Michael Feeney Callan wrote,
"Redford had become beloved in the drinking circles but was regarded as a loose cannon."
The author doesn't mention exactly what went down in the Kappa Sigma fraternity
that a young Redford belonged to. But considering he was kicked out of the
college after just 18 months, we can't imagine it was pretty.
But that wasn't the end of Redford's education. After losing his scholarship,
he spent time learning how to paint in both Florence and Paris
and later studied at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Things appeared to be going wonderfully for Robert Redford toward the end of the 1950s.
He'd just become a married man after walking down the aisle with his first wife,
Lola Van Wagenen, made his Broadway debut in Tall Story,
and became a parent for the first time with the birth of his son Scott.
Tragically, his world would come crashing down one day in November 1959 when the ten-week-old
Scott passed away from a condition that would later be termed Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Understandably, the incident devastated Redford, who believed he was responsible for not checking
in on the baby earlier. And it would take him more than half a century to open up to the public about
the grief he experienced. In an unusually candid 2011 interview, the Out of Africa star said,
"It was really hard. We were very young. I had my first theater job,
which didn't pay much. We didn't know anything about sudden infant death
syndrome so as a parent you blame yourself. It creates a scar that never completely heals."
Just three years after his firstborn son Scott's tragic death,
Robert Redford was forced to face the very real prospect of losing his second son.
Not only that, but his wife's life hung in the balance at the same time, too.
In 1962, David James Redford was prematurely born with the same
condition that had robbed John F. Kennedy of his second son,
Patrick. According to biographer Michael Feeney Callan's book, Robert Redford: The Biography,
the baby was only given a 40 percent chance of survival after being diagnosed with Hyaline
Membrane Disease. But luckily, the tot and his mother both managed to pull through.
The Oscar winner had previously alluded to the hardships that his offspring have
faced over the years. In a 1998 chat with People magazine, Redford had this to say:
"People think it's been easy for me. It's so untrue. The hardest thing in
the world is when your children have problems. There have been so many hits
on our family that no one knows about, and I don't want them to, for my family's sake."
Tragedy struck Robert Redford's family, and his daughter, in particular, once again in 1983. In
what is still something of an unsolved mystery, Shauna Redford's journalism student boyfriend
Sid Wells was fatally shot in the back of his head at his University of Colorado apartment.
His roommate Thayne Smika, who was reportedly due to pay rent that day,
was soon named as the number one suspect for the shocking murder. But although he was arrested,
the lack of proof meant that Smika wasn't charged or indicted by a grand jury. And
incredibly, he hasn't been seen since 1986. Smika's car was found abandoned in Beverly
Hills that year, and reports suggest he may have fled America altogether.
The plot thickened in 2010 when enough new evidence emerged for a case review.
The district attorney's office in Boulder County subsequently gave the go-ahead for
an arrest affidavit. But despite issuing age-progressed mugshots to the public and
a more concerted effort to find him, Smika still remains at large.
In 1997, Redford, who attended Wells' funeral after initially deciding to keep away over fears
of press intrusion, said that he's still very much haunted by the incident, telling the Star Tribune,
"It's like a partially opened door with a very dark room behind it."
Robert Redford may well have had Natalie Wood to thank for his breakthrough Golden
Globe-winning role as closeted film star Wade Lewis in Inside Daisy Clover.
"Everything's for you, except the yellow roses."
"Who are they for?"
"Your crazy mother. Should we cut out?"
The actress, who was very much the bigger star at the time,
reportedly recommended the man she first met at high school to Warner Bros. for the 1965 drama.
The close-knit pair would also share the screen a year later in This Property Is Condemned.
Tragically, in 1981, Wood lost her life in circumstances that remain mysterious to this day.
The multiple Academy Award nominee was on a boating trip around Catalina Island
with her husband Robert Wagner and their fellow actor friend Christopher Walken
when Wood drowned. It's still not known how or exactly when Wood ended up in the water,
but speculation has continued to grow ever since.
Redford was understandably left devastated by the loss of his friend,
and despite his reputation as a private man, has often spoken about their connection. He narrated
a glowing tribute to his former co-star for the Turner Classic Movies network and also agreed to
be interviewed for the 2020 HBO documentary about Wood's legacy, What Remains Behind.
Back in the mid-1980s, Robert Redford and Lola Van Wagenen appeared to have one of the most
stable marriages in Hollywood. The pair had tied the knot in 1958 and overcame the tragic death
of their first-born Scott to have three other children, Shauna, James, and Amy. But in 1985,
they divorced, though no one knew it at the time. Redford was so private about
his private life that it took a decade before the media could confirm the divorce happened.
"you wait. It's gotta feel right,
the timing's gotta feel right. And when it does feel right, you make your move."
In 2001, 16 years after the split, the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid star told The Telegraph that the relationship had come to a natural end:
"It was mutual and it was right to move on. We still have great love, great affection,
great friendship. It is wonderful, and I think we probably deserve
credit for it because the kids are great, they came through it okay."
Redford waited quite a while to say "I do" again. He walked down the aisle with German
artist Sibylle Szaggars in 2009, almost a quarter-century after his divorce. However,
the pair had been living together since the mid-'90s at Redford's Sundance home.
No parent should outlive one of their children, let alone two.
But that's the situation that Robert Redford and his ex-wife Lola Van Wagenen faced in
October 2020 when son James passed away from liver cancer at the age of just 58.
"It's hard to explain that feeling unless you've gone through it. But it's tough."
James Redford, who was born three years after the death of his baby brother Scott,
had suffered from liver problems throughout his life. He underwent liver transplant surgery
in 1993 and later founded an institute for awareness about the procedure. Sadly, while
awaiting a new transplant in 2019, the documentary filmmaker was diagnosed with bile-duct cancer.
A year later, his wife Kyle, also the mother to his two children, confirmed on
Twitter that he'd succumbed to the disease. In a statement given to People magazine, publicist
Cindi Berger revealed that Robert was mourning with his family during the difficult time.