Known for his starring roles in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men,” Redford also directed award-winning films such as “Ordinary People” and “A River Runs Through It.”Charles Robert Redford Jr. was an American actor, director, and producer. He won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. He also won the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1996, the Academy Honorary Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Honorary Cesar in 2019. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most important persons in the world.
Redford began his career as a TV actor in Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. He then made his Broadway debut as a newlywed spouse in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park. Redford's first movie was War Hunt. He became a leading actor in movies like Barefoot in the Park, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jeremiah Johnson, The Candidate, and The Sting, the last of which garnered him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Redford stayed famous by acting in movies like The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor, All the President's Men, The Electric Horseman, Brubaker, The Natural, and Out of Africa. He went on to star in Sneakers, All Is Lost, Truth, Our Souls at Night, and The Old Man & the Gun. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Endgame, Redford played Alexander Pierce. Endgame was Redford's last movie role.
Ordinary People, a family drama that won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, was Redford's first picture as a director. He went on to direct eight feature films, such as the historical drama Quiz Show, the neo-western The Horse Whisperer, the period drama A River Runs Through It, and the sports fantasy The Legend of Bagger Vance. In 1981, Redford helped build the Sundance Resort and Film Institute. He was also noted for his long career as a political activist, during which he fought for the rights of Native Americans, indigenous people, and LGBT people, as well as environmental issues.
Charles Robert Redford Jr. was born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California. His mother, Martha Woodruff Redford, was from Austin, Texas, and his father, Charles Robert Redford Sr., was an accountant. William was his father's half-brother. Redford's family came from Ireland, Scotland, and England. His great-great-grandfather, a Protestant Englishman called Elisha Redford, married Mary Ann McCreery, who was of Irish Catholic origin, in Manchester, Lancashire. In 1849, they moved to New York City in the United States and then settled in Stonington, Connecticut. They had a son named Charles, who was the first to get the name. The Harts were Irish from Galway, while the Greens were Scotch-Irish who came to the US in the 18th century. Redford's dad worked in El Segundo, but his family lived in Van Nuys. He and his family would regularly go to Austin, Texas, to see his maternal grandpa when he was a youngster. Redford said that growing up in Texas made him appreciate nature and care about the environment.
Robert went to Van Nuys High School, where he was in the same class as baseball player Don Drysdale. He said he was a "bad" student and found motivation outside of school in art and athletics. He whacked tennis balls with Pancho Gonzalez at the Los Angeles Tennis Club to assist Gonzalez get ready for contests. When he was 11, Redford got a minor attack of polio.
He went to the University of Colorado in Boulder for a year and a half after graduating from high school in 1954. He was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity there. He worked in a restaurant and bar called The Sink when he was there. Now, a painting of him is one of the bar's most famous murals. While he was in Colorado, Redford started drinking a lot and lost his half-scholarship, which got him tossed out of school. He then traveled over Europe, residing in France, Spain, and Italy. He then went to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to study painting and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City to take lessons.
Redford started his career in New York City, where he worked on stage and on TV. He made his Broadway debut in a minor part in Tall Story, then had parts in The Highest Tree and Sunday in New York. As the uptight newlywed spouse of Elizabeth Ashley in the original 1963 cast of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, he had his biggest Broadway hit. Redford was a guest star on many TV dramas starting in 1960. Some of these shows were Naked City, Maverick, The Untouchables, The Americans, Whispering Smith, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Route 66, Dr. Kildare, Playhouse 90, Tate, The Twilight Zone, The Virginian, and Captain Brassbound's Conversion.
In The Virginian, Robert Redford and Patricia Blair play the main characters.
Redford's first movie job was in Tall Story, when he played the same part he did on Broadway. Anthony Perkins, Jane Fonda, and Ray Walston were the main actors in the movie. After he did well on Broadway, he got bigger parts in movies. In "Breakdown," one of the penultimate episodes of the syndicated adventure series Rescue 8, which starred Jim Davis and Lang Jeffries, Redford played Danny Tilford, a young guy with mental problems who was stuck in the rubble of his family's garage. For his role in The Voice of Charlie Pont, Redford was nominated for an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor. He didn't appear on TV again until 2019, however he did appear in the ABC medical drama Breaking Point on October 7, 1963. It was about psychiatry. Redford obtained his second movie role in War Hunt in 1962. Soon after, he was featured with screen veteran Alec Guinness in the war comedy Situation Hopeless... But Not Serious, in which he played a US soldier who was wrongfully imprisoned by a German citizen long after the war was over. He played a bisexual movie star who marries Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover, which won him a Golden Globe for best new star. He then joined her and Charles Bronson in Sydney Pollack's This Property Is Condemned, again as her lover, but this time in a movie that did even better. That same year, he worked with Jane Fonda for the first time in Arthur Penn's The Chase. This was the only time Redford and Marlon Brando would work together.
1967–1979: Career success
Redford in the movie Barefoot in the Park.
Fonda and Redford worked together again in the hit movie adaptation of Barefoot in the Park. Twelve years later, they were co-stars again in Pollack's The Electric Horseman. Then, 38 years later, they worked together again on Netflix's Our Souls at Night. After this first triumph, Redford was worried about how people saw him as a blond man and turned down roles in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And The Graduate. In George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, written by William Goldman, Redford got the role he had been looking for. It was the first time he worked with Paul Newman. The movie was a big hit and made him a big star who could make a lot of money. It also made him look like a smart, dependable, and occasionally sarcastic decent person on screen.
Redford didn't get an Academy Award or a Golden Globe nomination for playing the Sundance Kid, but he did win a British Academy of Film and Television Award for that performance and for his roles in Downhill Racer and Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here. The latter two movies, as well as Little Fauss and Big Halsy and The Hot Rock, did not do well at the box office. Redford has wanted to work on both sides of the camera for a long time. Redford was the executive producer of Downhill Racer as early as 1969. The Candidate, a political parody, scored okay at the box office and with critics.
Redford in 1973
Beginning in 1973, Redford had a four-year run of box office hits that was practically unmatched. Jeremiah Johnson, a western that came out in early 1973 and was re-released in 1975, would have been the second-highest-grossing movie in 1973. The Way We Were, a romantic historical drama starring Barbra Streisand, was the fifth highest-grossing movie of 1973. The criminal comedy reunion with Paul Newman, The Sting, became the highest-grossing movie of 1974 and one among the top 20 highest-grossing movies of all time when adjusted for inflation. It also earned Redford his only Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. The next year, he was in the romance drama The Great Gatsby with Mia Farrow, Sam Waterston, and Bruce Dern. The movie made the eighth most money at the box office in 1974. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was the tenth highest-grossing movie of 1974 because it was re-released after The Sting became famous. Redford was the first actor since Bing Crosby in 1946 to have three movies in the top 10 grossing movies of the year. Movie exhibitors elected Redford the best box-office star in Hollywood every year from 1974 to 1976.
The Great Waldo Pepper, a 1920s aviation drama, and Three Days of the Condor, a spy thriller with Faye Dunaway, were two of Redford's big movies in 1975. They came in at Nos. 16 and 17 in box office grosses for that year. He was in the No. 2 highest-grossing movie of 1976, the highly praised All the President's Men, alongside Dustin Hoffman. Redford wrote The Outlaw Trail: A Journey Through Time in 1976. Redford says, "The Outlaw Trail." It was a name that caught my interest—a place in Western legend that was important. It was a name that, for me, had a kind of enchantment, freedom, and mystery, whether it was true or not. I wanted to view it the same way the outlaws did, on foot and horseback, and write about the trip using words and pictures.
Redford's role as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in All the President's Men was a big deal for him. He was not just the executive producer and co-star, but the movie's serious subject matter—the Watergate scandal—and its attempt to make journalism look authentic also showed the actor's offscreen interest in political issues. The movie was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It won for Best Screenplay. It earned the New York Film Critics Award for Best Picture and Best Director. Redford was in a part of the war movie A Bridge Too Far in 1977. He then had a two-year break from movies before playing a rodeo star who was beyond his prime in the adventure-romance The Electric Horseman. This movie brought him back together with Fonda, and it was the ninth highest-grossing movie of 1980.
First time directing: 1980–1998
The drama film Ordinary People was the first movie Redford directed. It was about an upper-middle-class family's progressive breakdown after the loss of a son. People said that Redford got a great dramatic performance out of Mary Tyler Moore and great work out of Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton, who also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The movie won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Redford himself. It is one of the most praised movies of the decade. Roger Ebert called it "an intelligent, perceptive, and deeply moving film." Later that year, he starred in the prison drama Brubaker as a prison warden trying to change the system.
Redford with Melanie Griffith and Sonia Braga at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival to promote The Milagro Beanfield War
He then went on to star in the baseball drama The Natural. Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa, which had Redford as the male protagonist opposite Meryl Streep, was a huge hit at the box office. It won a Golden Globe for Best Picture and seven Oscars, including Best Picture. Streep was nominated for Best Actress, while Redford was not. The movie was Redford's biggest hit of the decade and the most successful of the seven movies he made with Pollack. Redford's next movie, Legal Eagles, which starred Debra Winger, barely did well at the box office.
Redford didn't direct again until The Milagro Beanfield War, which was a well-made but not very popular movie version of John Nichols's famous book about the Southwest. The Milagro Beanfield War is about the residents of Milagro, New Mexico, fighting against major developers who want to damage their town and make them leave by raising taxes. A River Runs Through It, a historical drama based on Norman Maclean's novella and starring Craig Sheffer, Brad Pitt, and Tom Skerritt, was another production he directed. Redford was up for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director. In 1994, he directed the movie Quiz Show, which was about the quiz show controversy that happened in the late 1950s. In the second movie, Redford collaborated with a script by Paul Attanasio, famous cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and a solid ensemble that included Paul Scofield, John Turturro, Rob Morrow, and Ralph Fiennes. Newsweek's David Ansen said, "Robert Redford may have become a more complacent movie star in the last decade, but he has become a more daring and accomplished filmmaker." His finest movie since "Ordinary People" is "Quiz Show."
Redford was still a big celebrity throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Redford's third picture as a filmmaker, A River Runs Through It, was out in 1992. It marked a comeback to popular success for Redford as a director and helped make Pitt more famous. He played a millionaire businessman who tests a couple's morality in the 1993 movie Indecent Proposal, which became one of his most famous and well-known performances. The movie was a huge smash that year. He was in the romantic comedy Up Close & Personal with Michelle Pfeiffer and The Horse Whisperer with Kristin Scott Thomas and a young Scarlett Johansson. He also directed The Horse Whisperer. Redford also kept making movies with political themes, such Havana, in which he played Jack Weil, a professional gambler in Cuba during the Revolution in 1959, and Sneakers, in which he appeared opposite River Phoenix and Sidney Poitier.
1999–2012
This part requires more citations to be sure it's true. Please help make this page better by adding citations to trustworthy sources in this part. You can question and take down information that doesn't have a source.
Redford in 2012
In The Legend of Bagger Vance, Redford also directed Matt Damon and Will Smith. In the prison drama The Last Castle, directed by Rod Lurie, he played a disgraced Army commander who was sent to prison. The two worked together again that year on Spy Game, which was another hit for them. This time, though, Redford was an actor instead of a director. At that time, he wanted to direct and appear in a sequel to The Candidate, but it never occurred. Redford, a well-known environmental crusader, narrated the IMAX documentary Sacred Planet, which takes viewers on a tour around the world to some of its most beautiful and endangered sites. Redford played a wealthy businessman in the thriller The Clearing, which also starred Helen Mirren. His kidnapping reveals the secrets and flaws that helped him achieve the American Dream.
The Motorcycle Diaries, a coming-of-age road movie about a young medical student named Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his companion Alberto Granado, brought Redford back to production. It also looked at the political and socioeconomic problems in South America that affected Guevara and helped define his destiny. Walter Salles, the director, said that Redford was very important in getting the picture finished and released after five years of work. Redford got good reviews for his role as a grumpy rancher in director Lasse Hallstrom's An Unfinished Life. He has to take in his estranged daughter-in-law, whom he blames for his son's death, and the granddaughter he never knew he had when they ran away from an abusive relationship. The movie was put on hold for a long period while its distributor Miramax was reorganized. Most people thought it was too romantic and clichéd.
Redford, on the other hand, went back to familiar ground when he worked with Streep again, 22 years after they featured in Out of Africa, for his own movie, Lions for Lambs, which also starred Tom Cruise. The movie got a lot of attention before it came out, but it had mixed reviews and didn't do well at the box office. Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman said, "Lions for Lambs is so square that it looks like something from the gray twilight glow of the golden age of television." The military storyline, which is clunky, looks to be happening on stage. In 2010, Redford made The Conspirator, a historical drama about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In the 2011 documentary Buck by Cindy Meehl, Redford talked about his time working with Buck Brannaman on the set of The Horse Whisperer. Redford directed The Company You Keep in 2012. In it, he played a former Weather Underground militant who goes on the run after a journalist finds out who he is. He, Shia LaBeouf, and Julie Christie were all in the movie.
From 2013 to 2025
Redford and LaBeouf at the Venice Film Festival in 2012
Redford was in All Is Lost, which was directed by J.C. in 2013. Chandor, about a guy who is lost at sea. He got a lot of praise for his role in the movie, which simply included him as the only actor and nearly little conversation. Redford was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. This was the first time he had received an acting award from that group. Ali Arikan commented on RogerEbert.com that "Chandor plays to Redford's strengths: his battered face, calm determination, and ability to stay out of the ups and downs of a 'normal' life." In exchange, Redford offers the best performance of the last part of his career in a role that is hard both physically and mentally.
In April 2014, Redford played Alexander Pierce, the chief of S.H.I.E.L.D. and commander of the Hydra unit running the Triskelion in the Marvel Studios superhero movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He was the major villain. Redford co-produced the movie A Walk in the Woods, which was based on Bill Bryson's book of the same name. He also appeared in it with Emma Thompson and Nick Nolte. Redford bought the movie rights to the book from Bryson after reading it more than ten years ago. He planned to appear in it with Paul Newman, but he put the project on hold following Newman's death.
That same year, he starred with Cate Blanchett in James Vanderbilt's Truth as news anchor Dan Rather. The movie got mixed reviews. Justin Chang of Variety said, "Redford, who looks a lot like Rather but not quite enough to make you forget who you're watching, plays the veteran newsman with easy gravitas, inner strength, and a gentle paternal twinkle, with little display of the anger and volatility for which he was often known over the course of his storied career." In 2016, he played Mr. Meacham in the Disney remake of Pete's Dragon. Redford featured in The Discovery and Our Souls at Night the same year. Both movies came out on Netflix streaming in 2017. Redford also produced the second movie, which got good reviews and brought him and Fonda back together for the sixth time.
In the David Lowery-directed drama picture The Old Man & the Gun, which came out in September 2018, Redford portrayed the role of bank robber Forrest Tucker. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance. Alissa Wikinson stated in Vox that "In The Old Man & the Gun, both Redford and Lowery are going back to their roots." Redford has been a bank robber for a long time, and it feels like a fitting end to a career that began with his role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Paul Newman. In August 2018, Redford said he was done acting after finishing the movie, but the next month he said he "regretted" saying he was done because "you never know."
He briefly played Alexander Pierce again in a cameo in Avengers: Endgame, which was filmed in 2017, before the first movie was finished.
Redford, who is also an executive producer of the show Dark Winds, made an appearance as a prisoner playing chess with fellow executive producer George R. R. Martin.
Awards and credits for acting
Robert Redford's filmography and a list of the awards and nominations he has earned are the main articles.
On December 4, 2005, during a ceremony in the Blue Room at the White House, U.S. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush took pictures with the Kennedy Center honorees. They were actress Julie Harris, actor Redford, singer Tina Turner, ballet dancer Suzanne Farrell, and musician Tony Bennett.
Redford earned the 1980 Academy Award for Best Director for his first picture as a director, Ordinary People. At the 74th Academy Awards, he won an Honorary Award from the Academy. He won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 74th Venice Film Festival in 2017. At the 44th Cesar Awards in Paris on February 22, 2019, Redford got the Honorary Cesar.
Redford went to the University of Colorado in the 1950s and got an honorary degree in 1988. The National Audubon Society gave Redford the Audubon Medal, its highest honor, in 1989. He got an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Bard College in 1995. At the 240th Commencement exercises on May 25, 2008, Brown University gave Redford an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree. The actor also spoke at the celebrations. In 2010, he won the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. Redford gave the graduating speech and got an honorary degree from Colby College in Maine on May 24, 2015.
President Bill Clinton gave him the National Medal of Arts in 1996. President Nicolas Sarkozy made Redford a chevalier of the Legion d'honneur on October 14, 2010. On November 22, 2016, President Barack Obama gave Redford the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He got the Kennedy Center Honors in December 2005 for his work in American culture. The people who get these awards are acknowledged for their lifelong contributions to American culture through the performing arts, which might include dance, music, theater, opera, movies, and TV.
Redford won the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2008. This is one of the most valuable prizes in the arts and is given every year to "a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind's enjoyment and understanding of life." In 2009, the University of Southern California School of Dramatic Arts announced the first annual Robert Redford Award for Engaged Artists. The school's website says that the award was created "to honor those who have distinguished themselves not only in the exemplary quality, skill, and innovation of their work, but also in their public commitment to social responsibility, to increasing awareness of global issues and events, and to inspiring and empowering young people."
Institute of Sundance
Redford used the money he made from acting, starting with his paychecks from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Downhill Racer, to buy a ski area on the east side of Mount Timpanogos, northeast of Provo, Utah. He called it "Timp Haven" and then changed the name to "Sundance" after his character in the movie. Redford's ex-wife Lola was from Utah, and they constructed a house there in 1963. Parts of the movie Jeremiah Johnson were filmed near the ski region. Redford loves this movie and it has had a big impact on him.
Redford went on to start the Sundance Film Festival, which is now the biggest festival in the country for independent films. Sundance showed 125 feature-length films from 34 nations in 2008. More than 50,000 people came to see them in Salt Lake City and Park City, Utah.
Robert Redford also created the Sundance Institute, Sundance Cinemas, Sundance Catalog, and the Sundance Channel. These are all located in and around Park City, which is 30 miles north of the Sundance ski area. Redford also owned the restaurant Zoom in Park City, which closed in May 2017.
Wildwood Enterprises, Inc.
Robert Redford and Bill Holderman, the producer, were co-owners of Wildwood Enterprises, Inc. They worked on movies like Lions for Lambs, Quiz Show, A River Runs Through It, Ordinary People, The Horse Whisperer, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Slums of Beverly Hills, The Motorcycle Diaries, and The Conspirator.
Productions by Sundance
Redford was the president and co-founder of Sundance Productions, along with Laura Michalchyshyn.
Sundance Productions' most recent works are Chicagoland, Cathedrals of Culture, The March, and the Emmy-nominated All The President's Men Revisited, as well as Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno Live! And To Russia With Love on Epix.
Redford has been very active in independent film since he started the nonprofit Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah, in 1981. Sundance has helped indie filmmakers with its many training programs and well-known film festival. Redford inked an agreement with Showtime in 1995 to launch a 24-hour cable TV station that would show only indie films. The Sundance Channel started on February 29, 1996.
Life at home
Family and marriage
Redford and Lola Van Wagenen got married in Las Vegas on August 9, 1958. On September 12, there was a second gathering at Lola's grandmother's house. Scott Anthony Redford, Shauna Jean Redford, David James Redford, and Amy Hart Redford were their four children. Scott died of sudden infant death syndrome when he was 2 years and 1 month old. He is interred at Provo City Cemetery in Provo, Utah. Shauna is a painter and Eric Schlosser is a journalist. They are married. James was a producer and writer. Amy is an actor, director, and producer. Seven of Redford's grandkids were born.
Redford and Van Wagenen never said publicly that they were getting a divorce or breaking up, but in 1982, entertainment reporter Shirley Eder said that the two had "been very much apart for a number of years." In 1991, Parade magazine said, "it is unclear whether the divorce has been finalized."
Redford and his long-time partner, Sibylle Szaggars, got married on July 11, 2009, at the Louis C. Jacob Hotel in Hamburg, Germany. She moved in with Redford in 1996 and lived with him in Sundance, Utah. Alfred A. Knopf released Robert Redford: The Biography in May 2011. It was written by Michael Feeney Callan with Redford's help and included a lot of his personal files, diaries, and taped interviews.
Death and what they left behind
On September 16, 2025, Redford died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Sundance. He was 89 years old. Many others in the entertainment world expressed their respects to Redford, including his Out of Africa co-star Meryl Streep, who commented, "One of the lions has died." "Rest in peace, my dear friend." Ron Howard, Marlee Matlin, Colman Domingo, and Stephen King are some of the other people who have paid respect to Redford.
Variety reported in an obituary that he "became a godfather for independent film as founder of the Sundance Film Institute," that "as a movie star in his prime, few could touch him," and that "in his '70s heyday, few actors possessed Redford's star wattage."
Andrew Pulver wrote for The Guardian on Redford, calling him a "giant of American cinema" and "one of the defining movie stars of the 1970s." He was able to easily move between the Hollywood new wave and the mainstream film industry.
Activism in politics
Redford and the U.S. George H. W. Bush was president in 1989.
Redford was in favor of the arts, Native American rights, LGBT rights, and protecting the environment. He also backed groups that fight for change, such the Directors Guild of America's Political Action Committee. Redford has backed Republicans, such as Brent Cornell Morris, who ran for the Republican nomination for Utah's 3rd congressional district in 1990 but lost. Redford also backed Gary Herbert, a friend and fellow Republican, in Herbert's successful bid to become Utah's Lieutenant Governor in 2004. Later, Herbert was elected Governor of Utah.
Redford with Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico, in 2009
Redford was a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council because he cared a lot about the environment. He backed Barack Obama, a Democrat, for reelection in 2012. Redford was the first person to quote Donald Trump in his book Crippled America. He said, "I'm glad he's in there, being the way he is, and saying what he says and the ways he says it. I think shakes things up and I think that is very needed." A representative later said that Redford's statement, which came from a longer conversation with Larry King, was not meant to support Trump for president.
Redford wrote an opinion piece in 2019 in which he called Trump's government a "monarchy in disguise" and said, "It's time for Trump to go." Later, Redford wrote another op-ed with someone else in which he attacked how Trump handled the COVID-19 outbreak. He also used the public's response to the pandemic as an example of how to deal with climate change. He said it was a bad idea to get out of the Paris Agreement. In July 2020, Redford wrote an opinion piece in which he said that President Trump does not have a "moral compass." He also said in the same article that he would back Joe Biden in the presidential election in 2020.
Redford didn't like the Keystone Pipeline from the TransCanada Corporation. Russ Girling, the CEO of the company, named him the leader of the anti-pipeline protest campaign in 2013. In April 2014, Redford, a member of the Pitzer College Board of Trustees, and Laura Skandera Trombley, the president of Pitzer College, said that the college will sell off its fossil fuel assets from its endowment. At the time, it was the US college with the greatest endowment to make this promise. The LA news Club hosted the news conference. Pitzer College started the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability in November 2012.