Robert Redford Was ‘at Ease’ Living Away From the Spotlight in Utah: ‘He Liked His Peace’

Robert Redford didn’t consider himself a sex symbol. In a 1974 interview with The New York Times, the movie star confessed, “I never thought of myself as a glamorous guy, a handsome guy, any of that.” Audiences clearly thought otherwise. Throughout the course of his decades-long career, the reluctant heartthrob, who passed away in his sleep at his Utah home Sept. 16 at the age of 89, captivated audiences with his rugged good looks and golden-boy charm, earning his first Oscar nod in 1973 for The Sting.

He also dazzled his leading ladies, from Barbra Streisand and Meryl Streep to Jane Fonda and others. “I can’t stop crying,” Jane posted after news of his death broke, while Barbra called him “charismatic, intelligent, intense, always interesting.” As an insider tells Star, “Actresses adored Bob. It’s safe to say what they were feeling about him transferred to the screen to create sizzling chemistry.”

On-Screen Romance

In Robert Hofler’s book The Way They Were: How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen, the late director Sydney Pollack revealed that Barbra was “delighted” to star opposite Robert in the 1973 romance-drama The Way We Were. “She had a crush on him, even before we started,” he divulged. The film’s late screenwriter Arthur Laurents added that the star handled the infatuation well, “neither encouraging her nor using her crush to his advantage.” Indeed, the attraction may have been mutual. According to Hofler, the lore was that Robert wore two pairs of underwear, to “protect himself” during love scenes. He also asked Barbra, now 83, to wear a bikini beneath the covers to ensure the shots were “pretty G-rated,” per the author.

Meryl also developed a “huge crush” on Robert too when they filmed 1985’s Out of Africa, she confessed in 2024. Of the movie’s memorable scene, in which his character tenderly washes her hair while on safari, the actress, 76, gushed, “He just got really into it… By take five I was in love!” So much so, she admitted, “I didn’t want it to end that day.” Bob wasn’t just good with his hands. In a 1987 Life magazine interview, the Oscar winner called him “the best kisser I ever met in the movies.”

Jane can certainly vouch for that, having shot four films with Robert over the years, starting with 1967’s Barefoot in the Park. “He’s a great kisser,” the actress, 87, confirmed at a 2017 Venice Film Festival press conference for their final collaboration, Our Souls at Night. “It was fun to kiss him in my 20s and then to kiss him again in my almost 80s.” Jane couldn’t keep her hands off him during the filming of Barefoot, she added, and would later tell Ellen DeGeneres in 2017 that Robert was “so good looking,” she would “fall into his eyes and forget” her lines, per Today. Nothing ever transpired between the two off-camera, however, she shared in a 2015 interview with The Guardian, “because I was married and he was married.”

Endings and New Beginnings

By all accounts, the star was a one-woman man. After he wed first wife Lola Van Wagenen in 1958 at just 21 years old, the pair suffered heartbreak, losing an infant child a few years later. They divorced in 1985. (The parents of four lost another child, Jamie, to cancer in 2020.) The decision to part ways was a “mutual” one, he said in 2001. “We still have great love, great friendship.” In 2009, he married German-born artist Sibylle Szaggars in her hometown of Hamburg with just 30 friends and family in attendance. Though Robert was notoriously tight-lipped about his off-screen love life, he gave a rare comment about their relationship in a 2011 interview with AARP Magazine, calling Sibylle a “very special person” who gave him “a whole new life.”

In the end, it wasn’t female attention that mattered most to Robert, an environmental activist and founder of the acclaimed Sundance Film Festival. “He was one of those rare breeds, mysteriously attractive, and a total professional who kept his personal life separate from career,” says Star’s source. “There was no denying he was more at ease living out of the spotlight at his ranch in Utah.” It’s where he spent his final years and where he passed, “surrounded by those he loved,” Cindi Berger, CEO of Rogers & Cowan PMK, said in a statement shared with People. Adds the source: “Hollywood held no fascination for him. He liked his peace and quiet and privacy. Then again, that was part of his appeal.”