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Michael Feeney Callan: Robert Redford - The Biography (Simon and Schuster)

Robert Redford: the Sundance Kid, the Downhill Racer who walked Barefoot In The Park with Jane Fonda in the 1967 film and later set up his own Sundance Institute to encourage young film-makers.

Good-looking blond guy with great teeth.

But what do we know of the tight-jeaned Californian who seems fairly intense and aloof, whose acting roles have seen him, for the most part, play fairly intense – and aloof – creatures?

Michael Feeney Callan’s study of his subject is forensic, researching even the lowest-hanging branches of the Redford family tree before concentrating on the young Bobby Redford’s early life.

He was born in 1936 in Brentwood and lived in a working-class neighbourhood close to Beverly Hills. Redford’s school was a mix of Cadillacs and blue-collar sensibilities, and he was often “carpooled” to school by movie stars such as Zachary Scott.

This potentially divisive world, we learn, created an angry(ish) young man, who didn’t do drugs or serious crime but drank lots of beers and got involved in a hubcap-stealing racket. However, mostly he gazed at his own navel, drew cartoons and played lots of sport to a decent level.

A baseball scholarship took Redford off to a minor university and at this point the book becomes interesting, revealing the subject’s real love to be art, so young Bobby set off for Europe to become a tortured artist and find himself. Months later he found himself starving in a lonely garret and returned home, soon to sign up for acting school in New York.

But was he an acting natural? One day in drama college, Redford was required to perform a song but chose not to, instead reciting an Edgar Allan Poe poem while leaping on and off window ledges.

We don’t know if this stunt was a way of avoiding having to look bad by singing because there’s no analysis of the moment. Nor is there any real analysis of why Redford very quickly landed stage and theatre roles.

What you do glean is that Redford took himself extremely seriously. After his very first film outing in Barefoot In The Park, he demanded script and casting approval for future movies, highlighting real savvy, if not confidence in his own ability.

When considered for the part of Butch Cassidy, then the lesser role, Redford clinched the film after arguing he’d be better as Sundance. He was right. Butch was the funnier, more angular character. Sundance was deep and moody. Interestingly, Redford, at the time, claimed there were too many jokes in the movie, but the writer doesn’t dissect this notion.

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