Robert Redford Created a New Type of Hollywood Star

It’s about decency, isn’t it? For all the privilege Robert Redford enjoyed in his life—and between the California good looks, the patrician bearing, the fame, the ranch, the awards, the money, all of it, he must have been one of the most privileged human beings ever to walk the earth—he always seemed like an essentially decent man. On-screen, he excelled at playing decent men caught up in circumstances beyond their control, and he excelled, conversely, at sneaking a note of decency into the characters of outlaws and crooks. He seemed reasonable, even when he was acting in patently unreasonable ways. He could play a cereal company mascot who steals a horse in the middle of a disco routine, as he did in 1979’s The Electric Horseman, or he could play an Old West mountain man who embarks on a solo vengeance quest, as he did in 1972’s Jeremiah Johnson, and you’d never think, What the hell is this lunatic doing? You’d think, Hey, that handsome guy’s got the right idea.