Redford died in his sleep at his home outside Provo, Utah, his longtime publicist, Cindi Berger, confirmed.

The actor-producer-director, a four-time Oscar nominee and honorary Oscar recipient, was one of the few iconic screen figures of the past half-century.

He was the avatar of an all-American ideal who nonetheless took a dyspeptic view of his country in several notable dramas including Downhill Racer (1969), The Candidate (1972), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and All the President’s Men (1976).

But he could use his appeal to equal and devastating effect in romance, opposite Streisand in The Way We Were (1973).

Behind the California-kid surface was a darker and more complicated figure. The very definition of a Hollywood star, he nonetheless saw himself as an outsider and spent much of his time living away from the epicenters of the industry — including at the Utah skiing resort that he turned into the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival.

His mother, Martha, a homemaker, “was the strong member of the family. She was very outgoing. She always had a smile; she was very adventurous. Risk was not a big issue for her. She came from Texas, and she carried that kind of robust, jocular goodwill. She saw things in positive light. She also felt that I could do anything, and she was very supportive of anything I might try.”

Redford rebelled against his father’s cautiousness and against all expectations, even after the family moved to the more upscale Van Nuys. “I was always about breaking the rules,” he said. “I wanted to be away from Los Angeles because I felt it was going to the dogs. I was just getting more anxious about wanting out. I didn’t want to be wherever I was. I felt a certain suffocation. I felt things were closing in around me, and it made me anxious. I wanted to be free.”

After returning to the U.S., he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and found work in theater and television.

He became a young father and had four children with his first wife, Lola Van Wagenen, whom he had met when she was a student of 17 at Brigham Young University. One son, Scott, died at 2 1/2 months old from sudden infant death syndrome in 1959, leaving Redford guilt-ridden.

His other son, Jamie, diedmin October 2020 of bile-duct cancer in his liver.

He made his screen debut in a 1960 episode of ABC’s Maverick.

Three years later, he earned an Emmy nomination for his work on ABC anthology series Alcoa Premiere. He starred in Broadway production of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park (directed by Mike Nichols), which he later filmed alongside frequent collaborator Jane Fonda.

After the play, Redford turned down high-profile roles, including the lead in Nichols’ The Graduate (1967).

“I was suddenly Mr. Focus,” he told Callan. “Eleanor Roosevelt and Noël Coward dropped by. Natalie Wood came backstage. Bette Davis summoned me to her suite at the Plaza.” Ingrid Bergman gave him advice he embraced: “Do only good work.”

Redford’s debut, Tall Story (1960), was followed by Inside Daisy Clover (1965). He was a star, but not superstar. That changed in 1969 when he appeared as the Sundance Kid opposite Paul Newman, taking a role that had been offered to Jack Lemmon, Warren Beatty and Steve McQueen.

“The effects of Butch Cassidy were far-reaching for Redford,” wrote Callan. “In February 1968, Redford had been sleeping in hotel hallways in Grenoble … to save money. Two years later, in February 1970, he was national icon on the cover of Life magazine.”

He followed Butch Cassidy with Downhill Racer (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1970) and The Candidate, about a U.S. Senate contender who is the perfect front man but then seems lost when he faces the prospect of governing. “What do we do now?” he asks in the movie’s famous last line. Years later, Redford toyed with making a sequel, to be written by Larry Gelbart. “The truth is so awful,” he told The New York Times in 2003, “but in its own horrible way, it’s entertaining.”

He had met Woodward and Bernstein in Washington before their book was finished and paid $450,000 for the film rights, then was disappointed in Goldman’s script, which he heavily rewrote with director Alan J. Pakula after turning down Bernstein and Nora Ephron’s adaptation.

The drama, also starring Hoffman as Bernstein, was so serious in its attempt to capture the truth that the production took bags of trash from the real-life Post offices and used the papers on the set. Pakula shot an astounding 300,000 feet of film, which was reduced to 12,300 in the final, 2-hour, 18-minute movie.

The film almost had different ending: “Pakula wanted to show TV footage of Nixon’s resignation and the famous defiant farewell wave on the steps of the helicopter on the White House lawn.” Redford resisted. “I told Alan again and again, ‘This isn’t about Nixon. It’s about journalism.’” They compromised by showing a teletype machine ticking away, announcing Nixon’s decision.

Four years after President’s Men, Redford made his directing debut with Ordinary People (1980), based on Judith Guest’s novel, adapted by Alvin Sargent. It was an intimate family drama that Pakula regarded as subliminal autobiography.

None of his later movies as an actor equaled those of the late 1970s, even though many were hits. They included The Natural (1984), Out of Africa (1985) — another best picture Oscar— and Indecent Proposal (1993).

In all, Redford’s naturalism was so convincing, his acting so skilled, it almost disguised his talent; he never won an acting Oscar.

Producer Sherry Lansing remembered how he took Indecent Proposal‘s most memorable moment — when his character, billionaire John Gage, offers a young man $1 million to sleep with his wife — and tossed it off with brilliant casualness, as if throwing the line away. This was a man for whom there was not much difference between $1 and $1 million, any more than there was any difference between lust and love. Everything about him was revealed in that line — not least the actor’s intelligence in choosing not to play it melodramatically.

He often took months or even years to commit to a project, only to insist on changes and then sometimes pull out. He avoided darker, more dissolute characters, even though he was drawn to them. Dan Melnick, the late Hollywood executive and producer, cautioned 20th Century Fox that Redford would never agree to play the alcoholic lawyer in The Verdict (1982). Melnick was right; Redford dilly-dallied until he was fired by producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown and replaced by Newman.

He kept working steadily, playing news anchor Dan Rather in Truth (2015), and a widower who falls for his neighbor (Fonda) in Our Souls at Night (2017).

All the while, he maintained his involvement with Sundance; he only stepped down as the public face of that organization in 2019. That was almost two decades after the Academy had awarded him an honorary Oscar and two years after President Obama had given him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

His final onscreen appearance came this year in uncredited cameo on the AMC series “Dark Winds,” on which he was an executive producer.

But he had not lost his perfectionism. “When I started to direct, I wanted total control of the story,” he said. “I didn’t want to be dependent on anyone. But then you add producing to that, and then you add Sundance, and pretty soon you’re adding all these layers. Was all that other stuff worth it? That’s an open question.”