Robert Redford died today at his Utah mountain retreat at age 89, and with him passes something Hollywood has spent decades trying to kill: authentic masculinity.
Not the cartoonish chest-thumping that fuels today’s superhero factories, but the real thing. The quiet confidence. The moral backbone. The man who could command a room without raising his voice, who didn’t need a cape or a committee to tell him what courage looked like.
Breaking: Robert Redford, the award-winning actor and director and the force behind the Sundance Film Festival, has died. He was 89. https://t.co/xrIhDJBxxw pic.twitter.com/pnBNa90QeZ
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 16, 2025
Redford was one of the last great male icons, a breed that walked tall when Hollywood still believed men could be heroes worth emulating. He rose beside Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman, actors who didn’t need handlers to make them memorable.
They carried themselves with a weight and presence no trainer-sculpted physique or green-screen explosion could fake. They came from a time when a leading man was expected to lead, not sit there nodding like a trained seal repeating whatever line the crowd demanded.
Take “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Redford was never just another face on the screen. He was brave, loyal, reckless and unafraid when death came calling.
The Sundance Kid could draw fast and wisecrack faster, a mix of danger and charm few have matched. He picked his battles with care but never backed down from the ones that counted.
That final freeze-frame, pistols raised against impossible odds, spoke more about heroism than a hundred modern blockbusters combined. And far more than any bloated, three-hour CGI carnival Hollywood serves up today.
In “The Sting,” Redford played Johnny Hooker with the kind of cocky charm today’s script doctors would kill before page one. He drifted through Depression-era Chicago with a grin and a shrug, pulling cons that felt both dangerous and delightful.
The film swept seven Oscars because audiences understood something timeless: sometimes bad men deserve to be taken down, and sometimes good men bend the rules to make it happen.
“All the President’s Men” (1974) showed him at his most disciplined—Bob Woodward, the reporter who helped topple a president armed with nothing but notebooks, nouns and shoe leather. Redford embodied a kind of journalism that served the story instead of ideology.
Compare that to today’s media, where truth is trimmed, twisted and traded for clicks.
Even behind the camera, Redford’s instincts cut against the grain. “Ordinary People” explored family trauma with tenderness but without turning fathers into buffoons or men into punchlines. He told stories about people wrestling with real burdens, not manufactured identities.
No man in his films felt guilty for being male, white or successful. They simply had to wrestle with the consequences of being human.
Now compare that giant to today’s leading men.
Marvel has given us a generation of soft-spoken soy heroes who look like they need permission slips to throw a punch. I’m talking about Pedro Pascal, chasing every project while promoting whatever cause is fashionable. One week, he mouths off about borders, the next, he chants trans mantras.
He is shameless, willing to say or do anything to stay in the spotlight. He projects nothing but insecurity and inauthenticity. He is the very opposite of Redford, who carried authority without effort.
Hollywood now treats masculinity as a flaw to be fixed. Male characters are cast as villains, clowns or casualties—never men worth admiring. Scripts insist they be scolded, rescued or re-educated by women delivering lectures in place of dialogue.
The very notion that a man might show wisdom, strength, or leadership has become radioactive.
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Redford belonged to an era when men could be flawed without being feminized. His characters struggled, sinned and suffered, but they carried the weight themselves. They knew that sometimes the world needed strong men to stand between civilization and chaos, and they didn’t duck for cover when called.
What they call “toxic masculinity” today was simply masculinity then—plain, unapologetic, indispensable. The same masculinity that settled frontiers, built cities and forged industries. The same masculinity that stormed beaches, raised families and defended freedom against tyrants.
It gave us the prosperity our current culture squanders while sneering at the very men who made it possible.
Redford’s passing is more than the death of a great actor. It is the closing of a chapter when men on screen still looked like men off screen, when Hollywood still understood that boys needed heroes who didn’t weep their way through every crisis.
With him goes one of the last representatives of a breed that was hunted down by the very industry that once celebrated it.
Rest in peace, Sundance. You will be missed more than words can carry.
John Mac Ghlionn is a regular contributor to The Hill, The Blaze and The Spectator.
