Is Robert Redford Mormon

Robert Redford: How the matinee idol became a Hollywood movie maverick

A new biography of Robert Redford gets to the heart of an enigmatic, Gatsbyesque charmer who dreamed of freedom, honesty and social fulfillment. Actor, director, producer, conservationist, political activist and patron of independent cinema, Redford has lived a formidably energetic life while continuing to look like the diffident, tousle-haired all-American boy next door.

He'll be 75 on August 18, and his latest film as director, The Conspirator , a study of the fallout from the assassination of President Lincoln, is as ambitious and serious as anything he's done.

Irish writer Michael Feeney Callan has known Redford for 14 years, interviewed him at length, spoken to some 300 witnesses and had access to his diaries and notebooks. The other actor-director whom Redford most resembles is Clint Eastwood - the Depression and the Hollywood western formed an essential part of both mens' values.

Redford was an indifferent scholar but good at games, a nonconformist, and strikingly handsome.

A restless traveller, he was both arrogant and modest. Torn between painting and acting, he studied both in New York before opting for the latter.

He was a loner, yet married young to a Mormon and rapidly had a family.

Success came relatively soon to Redford and, in Callan's view, he perversely fought against it as unworthy of his destiny and deflecting him from his mystical dream of freedom, honesty and social fulfilment.

During the Broadway run of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park in 1963 (Redford's first major success and last stage appearance), Ingrid Bergman visited him backstage. Her exit line was a sonorous piece of advice: "Do only good work." This seems to have guided him over the next half-century as he entered into a creative alliance with the equally serious Sydney Pollack (who directed him in seven films), formed a lifelong friendship with Paul Newman, and became a major star. Along the way his evolving interest in social, political and ethical issues was brought to bear on the movies he produced and directed, with The Candidate, All the President's Men, A River Runs Through It and Quiz Show arguably his major achievements.

Of course, there were significant compromises.

iPOP 'The Book of Mormon' Catch a Movie - indieWIRE

The hot cast from Broadway’s latest sensation,“The Book of Mormon,” took a breather from their musical to catch the New York premiere of Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator,” last night in Manhattan. “Mormon” stars Nikki M. James (left) and Rory O’Malley caught up with indieWIRE at the after party, hosted by Piaget and The Wall Street Journal, at the swank Royalton.

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