This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Actor Robert Redford, who was made famous by his work in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and earned accolades for "The Way We Were," "Barefoot in the Park" and "Ordinary People," has died at the age of 89.
Reports said the Hollywood star, born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on August 18, 1936, passed away Tuesday at his home in Utah.
He once described the attraction of his career: "The idea of being an actor was to have a sense of freedom. You were free to be, to act as someone else, if you were paying attention to the people around you. … You had a chance to be an artist, because acting is an art form. You had a chance to say, 'I know this person, I've seen this person before and I want to bring that forward.'"
He won two Oscars, five Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, Kennedy Center Honors and the Presidential Medal of Freedom over his six decades in front of the camera.
He also was integral in "The Sting," "All the President's Men" and "Out of Africa."
His father was an oil company accountant and his mother held a passion for literature and the arts, and while enjoying football, tennis and track and field as a youth, he struggled to find his own career, the New York Post reported.
He described being fired as a box boy and from an oil company job.
When his mother died when he was 18, he traveled to Europe to study art, later returning to take up acting.
"I suffered for four or five years not being sure I wanted to be in that business because I so wanted to be an artist. I just wanted to paint and sketch and tell stories by drawing," he once explained in an interview.
He later played the role of a villain, in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier."
In 2018 he said, after finishing a project, "I thought, 'That's enough. Why don't you quit while you're a little bit ahead? Don't wait for the bell to toll. Just get out.' So I felt my time had come and I couldn't think of a better project to go out on than this film."
He also started the Sundance Institute and he often preached messages about the green ideology.
