Robert Redford: 'When I was a kid, no one ever told me I was good looking'

Honoree Robert Redford attends the 42nd Chaplin Award Gala at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. Photo / Getty

So this is it? The Sundance Kid is riding into the sunset? Robert Redford, that rare movie icon who, for the best part of six decades, has managed to cultivate a reputation as both a respected actor and a golden boy sex symbol, is finally calling it quits and retiring?

His tanned face wrinkles into a smile at the question. "Well, never say never," he says.

"You have to be careful about being too final because sometimes you have to change your mind. But I feel this is the right time to go out as an actor, because I've been doing this since I was 21 and that's a long time. So it's just a question of moving on to something else, which would be directing and producing."

Will he miss it?

"I'll have to wait and see," he replies.

He is certainly going out on a high. Redford has chosen as his last acting job The Old Man and the Gun, a comedy drama that has already attracted rave reviews at film festivals. The true story of Forrest Tucker, a "gentleman" bank robber who escaped from prison 18 times and was still pulling off bank robberies well into his seventies, the movie recalls Redford's heyday playing outlaws and other rascally characters.

"This feels like the right film to go out on as an actor because the film I had done before that – Our Souls At Night – I was very proud of but it was very serious, kind of a heavy lift, a dramatic love story with Jane Fonda. It was a wonderful film to work on but it was very sad so I wanted the last film I act in to be uplifting.

"It's an incredible, bizarre story because it's true. This guy really did exist, he really did rob banks, he really had a good time, he never hurt anybody, he was always smiling, enjoying it, getting put in prison, escaping from prison, getting put back in prison, escaping again. Back and forth, back and forth."

American actors Robert Redford and Jane Fonda in a promotional portrait for 'Barefoot In The Park', directed by Gene Saks, 1967. Photo / Getty

Dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt with tousled blonde hair turning grey at the sides, Redford looks in good shape for 82, although he is slightly hard of hearing and sometimes needs questions repeated. He is also surprisingly loquacious.

His old friend Paul Newman once said of him that "he makes the Sphinx look like a blabbermouth", but today the actor is in reflective mood and happy to share tales from his long career.

Inevitably, the conversation turns to Jane Fonda, his legendary co-star with whom he made the classic romcom Barefoot in the Park. Promoting Our Souls At Night last year, Fonda said she "fell in love" with Redford on every movie they made together. "He's a great kisser, so it was fun to kiss him in my 20s and to kiss him again in my almost 80s."

Redford, who has three grown-up children and five grandchildren, and married his long-term German partner Sibylle Szaggars in 2009, is not quite so effusive, but does not deny there was something special about their relationship.

"Things just kind of fell into place [with Jane]," he says. "We didn't need to discuss or rehearse, and that quality maintained itself over many, many years as she and I worked together."

Robert Redford (left) as Sundance Kid and Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Photo / Getty

Redford has been lucky with co-stars and says the two films he made with Paul Newman, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, are his two favourites of the 50 movies he has made, with The Sting just edging into top spot.

"I enjoyed making both of them, but if I were to step way back and be truly objective, I would say, as much as I love Butch Cassidy, I think The Sting is one of the finest films ever, and that belongs to [director] George Roy Hill. He's the guy who designed it, who came up with the music and did everything.

"I hadn't seen it for many, many years until recently when my daughter wanted me to see it again, and when I did I realised, 'God, this is a really good movie. Really well made.'"

Redford and Newman were planning to team up again for A Walk in the Woods, Redford's film based on the book by Bill Bryson. But, he says, "Sadly Paul died before we could do it together."

One might think that, with his good looks and growing up as he did in Santa Monica, on the outskirts of Los Angeles and near the film studios, Redford was destined for a career in movies. But that was never his ambition. He had polio as a child and went off the rails as a teenager, drinking too much and getting involved in street gangs.

American actors Robert Redford and Jane Fonda on the set of The Electric Horseman directed by Sydney Pollack. Photo / Getty

And, he says, his looks weren't that special either.

"When I was a kid no one ever told me I was good looking; I never heard that," he says with a smile. "My hair was red and unmanageable and I had cowlicks going all over the place. I had freckles and my teeth were too big. So I didn't have people coming up to me saying, 'Boy, you're a really good-looking guy.' That came much later and when it did come I wasn't prepared for it. I was surprised by it."

In fact, far from acting, Redford's ambition from the age of 17 was to be an artist. "Art meant so much to me and still does," he says. But, through what he has called "a series of serendipitous turns" he ended up at drama school in New York and from there started acting in both television and on stage.

He made his film debut in 1962's Korean War drama War Hunt and followed it with Inside Daisy Clover, The Chase, and a string of starring roles which established him as the epitome of the all-American boy.

American actor, director and producer Robert Redford. Photo / Getty

His 1976 role as Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in the multi-Oscar-winning All the President's Men, chronicling how Woodward's investigation with Carl Bernstein led to the toppling of President Nixon, resonated strongly with him and the actor is still friendly with Woodward, although he hasn't read the journalist's new book about the current administration.

Maybe, in semi-retirement, he will have more time for reading. There is also a movie he wants to direct, although he won't give any further details, and his other major passion: hiking.

"I love the idea of mountains; I love being in them and I love the comfort of them," he says. "So I have Sundance [his 5,000 acre ranch in Utah] and I have [a home in] Santa Fe and mountains exist in both those places.

Robert Redford and his wife Sibylle Szaggars at 69th Venice Film Festival. Photo / Getty

"If you just take time to take a walk in nature and recognise there's another language that nature has, I think that's valuable.

"As you get older life becomes more exciting because you're aware of more possibilities if you're willing to go there. As long as I can ride a horse and as long as I can hike, I'll be happy."