Robert Redford: An appreciation

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There was a warm glow in the mountains above Sundance this past week: Hundreds standing in line for a chairlift vigil to honor a man whose legacy is as solid as the mountain itself.

Robert Redford spent most of his life up in the Utah mountains. It's where "Sunday Morning" first met him back in 1994.

There was a gentleness between him and our Charles Kuralt; the outdoors meant the world to both of them.

"Every time I come up this canyon, every time I see that, and feel it, I realize that I'm not taking it for granted," Redford said.

For someone so big, so famous, so incandescent, he seemed heroically untouchable, and yet, he was always more than gracious with us.

Years after that first interview, he sat down with our Rita Braver, and a few years after that, he met with me.

From the archives: Three interviews with Robert Redford 28:06

Across the decades, he never really changed; his passions, his principles, his politics — each was as firmly grounded as he was.

As a kid growing up in Southern California, he'd watch other stars romance their way across the screen; frankly back then, he thought it was all pretty silly. "Any time there was a love scene on the screen, we'd go, Aww! Boo! You tell him lover! And make fun of the scene," Redford said. "Suddenly, the idea that I would be that guy was just too much for me to take."

He wasn't always the heartthrob, of course, especially in his later works. In "All Is Lost," it was all him. For an hour and forty-five minutes, he rarely even spoke, but we watched, because it was Redford.

He was 77 when he shot that. He was 81 when he did "The Old Man and the Gun." It was that film, he told us, that would likely be his last. As hard as it was for us to hear him say that, Redford replied, "It's hard for me to say it! Well, yeah, it's hard to talk about your end. I mean, who does?"

Among his more than 80 films, many have become classics. He defined what a leading man was.

And yet, when it came to his cultivation of younger filmmakers, celebrity was never a part of the conversation.

His Sundance Institute wasn't looking for stars; it was looking for storytellers.

Glenn Close was in it from the beginning. "I think he's an extraordinary man," she told us last January. "And I think the fact that he put his money and his time and his influence where his mouth was in this industry is remarkable."

His activism left us with a lot to think about – our place in the word, the false pride of celebrity, the need for wild places.

At a time when Hollywood voices are being discounted, Robert Redford's legacy reminds us that a voice in the wilderness can indeed echo a long way.