Robert Redford and me: One suburban girl’s life-long love affair

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Opinion

September 17, 2025 — 7.30pm

It’s funny how time catches up with you, unscheduled moments forcing you to pause and reflect on how far you’ve travelled. One of those pauses came for me in the early hours of today, when I heard the news that Robert Redford had died. Yes, he was genetically blessed and ridiculously good-looking, loved by women the world over, but he was also an amazing actor, director, founder of the Sundance Film Festival and later the Sundance Institute, and a lifelong environmentalist.

To me, he represented much of my teenage existence and, along with a few significant teachers, led to me searching for more in life than what my surroundings suggested I was entitled to.

Love at first sight (for this kid from the western suburbs) … Robert Redford with Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were.

Growing up in Sydney’s western suburbs in the 1960s and ’70s was a tough gig for many. Newly constructed suburban streets surrounded by factories, fibro homes and vast tracts of undeveloped land. Working-class Anglo-Saxon and newly arrived migrant families sweltered in the summer heat and braved frosty winter mornings. Air-con was a foreign concept. Cultural pursuits were often out of reach – because of the financial constraints and, literally, the distance from that culture.

Upon hearing of Redford’s death, I recalled the first time I was allowed, at 13, to travel by train into the city with a school friend to see Redford and Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were in 1974. How grown-up we felt in that red rattler, not a parent in sight, changing trains at Lidcombe and alighting at Town Hall and navigating our way to the cinema. No Google Maps, no mobile phones.

I fell instantly in love with Mr Redford, as only a teenage girl might. There he was, on the big screen, in his white navy uniform, his tousled blonde hair accentuating that jawline. His voice, like warm toffee. No other actor came close to winning my affections.

I professed my undying love over the years that followed, at our continued meetings. He maintained the “looking good in white” theme in The Great Gatsby in 1974, which led me to the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. On a Friday night in 1976, I saw the critically acclaimed All the President’s Men at the cinema in Parramatta. I’m embarrassed to say I dozed off for a while. As a 15-year-old, my grasp of American politics was scant. Yet a spark was ignited that night – an interest in politics.

Disco, Saturday Night Fever, senior school and a part-time job at the new fast-food “restaurant”, McDonald’s, consumed much of the last years of the 1970s. And my relationship with Redford was pushed to the background through teachers’ college.

It was Out of Africa in 1985 that brought him hurtling back – not least into my journey of learning, to understand more about colonisation and discover the writings of the Danish author Karen Blixen.

While the ’90s for me were defined by child-rearing, A River Runs Through It (1992) led me to try my hand at fly-fishing in Tasmania. While I could appreciate the good looks of a young Brad Pitt, my heart still belonged to Redford. Indecent Proposal (1993) sure was a fantasy, and a great diversion from the washing and cleaning that came with a household of five.

A teenage Lisa Johnson, hopelessly devoted to Robert Redford.

In 1998, Redford still looked great in denim, at 62, in The Horse Whisperer. Spy Game and The Company You Keep fed my love of espionage, and All Is Lost, while not critically acclaimed, reminded me that, no, all was never lost. Redford’s reunion movie with Jane Fonda in 2017, Our Souls at Night, reminded me that time was travelling fast. And The Old Man & the Gun confirmed that reflection and wisdom are the rewards of ageing.

I don’t have a favourite Redford film. But I’ve watched and rewatched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) with one of my daughters, who was more besotted with Paul Newman. And I’ve enjoyed reruns of The Sting (1973), one of my late father’s favourites (also a Paul Newman fan).

Sure, as a girl, I fell for his looks. As an older woman, I realise that Redford opened up my world and ignited my curiosity. I try to live by two pearls of wisdom that define Robert Redford for me. The first came from a conversation he had with his long-time friend Sydney Pollack, who had directed him in The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor and Out of Africa. “Success,” Redford told Pollack, “is a funny game. I don’t know that the most fun wasn’t when you were striving towards it, rather than achieving it.”

The second was in regards to retirement, which is around the corner for this girl from Chester Hill.

Paul Newman, as Butch Cassidy, and Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid, in the 1969 classic’s final shootout scene.

“You make the most of what you’ve been given – that’s how I see it,” Redford said. “And you keep pushing to make more of it. I don’t see any reason to stop. I think retirement can lead to death, and that’s not for me.” Indeed, he co-produced the series Dark Winds, in which he made a cameo appearance playing chess in a jail cell.

Thanks for the memories, Mr Redford. They light the corners of my mind.

Lisa Johnson is a school teacher who walks to work singing ’70s songs.