.jpg)
Charles Robert Redford Jr. (born August 18, 1936) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has received numerous accolades such as an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as 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 César in 2019. He was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014.
Appearing onstage in the late 1950s, Redford's television career began in 1960, including an appearance on Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1961 and The Twilight Zone in 1962. His greatest Broadway success was as the stuffy newlywed husband in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963). Redford made his film debut in War Hunt (1962). He gained success as a leading man in films such as Barefoot in the Park (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), and The Candidate (1972). He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the crime caper The Sting (1973). He continued to star in such films as The Way We Were (1973), All the President's Men (1976), and The Electric Horseman (1979).
Redford made his directorial film debut with Ordinary People (1980), winning four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and the Best Director. During this time, he starred in films such as Brubaker (1980), The Natural (1984), and Out of Africa (1985). He released his third film as a director, A River Runs Through It, in 1992. He went on to receive Best Director and Best Picture nominations in 1995 for Quiz Show. In 1981 Redford cofounded the Sundance Resort and Film Institute. His later film roles include All Is Lost (2013), Truth (2015), Our Souls at Night (2017), and The Old Man & the Gun (2018). Redford portrayed Alexander Pierce in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).
Early life and education
Redford was born on August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California, to Martha Woodruff Redford (née Hart; 1914–1955) and Charles Robert Redford Sr. (1914–1991), an accountant. He has a paternal half-brother, William. Redford is of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. His patrilineal great-great-grandfather, a Protestant Englishman named Elisha Redford, married Mary Ann McCreery, of Irish Catholic descent, in Manchester. They emigrated to New York City in 1849, immediately settling in Stonington, Connecticut. They had a son named Charles, the first in line to have been given the name. Regarding Redford's maternal lineage, the Harts were Irish from Galway and the Greens were Scots-Irish who settled in the United States in the 18th century. Redford's family lived in Van Nuys while his father worked in El Segundo.
Robert attended Van Nuys High School, where he was classmates with baseball pitcher Don Drysdale. He has described himself as having been a "bad" student, finding inspiration outside the classroom in art and sports. He hit tennis balls with Pancho Gonzales at the Los Angeles Tennis Club to help Gonzales warm up for matches.
After graduating from high school in 1954, he attended the University of Colorado in Boulder for a year and a half, where he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. While there, he worked at a restaurant/bar called The Sink, where a painting of his likeness still figures prominently among the bar's murals. While at Colorado, Redford began drinking heavily and, as a result, lost his half-scholarship and was kicked out of school. He went on to travel in Europe, living in France, Spain, and Italy. He later studied painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and took classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Class of 1959) in New York City.
1967–1979: Career stardom
Fonda and Redford were paired again in the popular big-screen version of Barefoot in the Park (1967) and were again co-stars many years later in Pollack's The Electric Horseman (1979), followed 38 years later with a Netflix feature, Our Souls at Night. After this initial success, Redford became concerned about his blond male stereotype image and refused roles in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate. Redford found the niche he was seeking in George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), scripted by William Goldman, in which he was paired for the first time with Paul Newman. The film was a huge success and made him a major bankable star, cementing his screen image as an intelligent, reliable, sometimes sardonic good guy.
While Redford did not receive an Academy Award or Golden Globe nomination for playing the Sundance Kid, he won a British Academy of Film and Television Award (BAFTA) for that role and his parts in Downhill Racer (1969) and Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969). The latter two films and the subsequent Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970), and The Hot Rock (1972) were not commercially successful. Redford had long harbored ambitions to work on both sides of the camera. As early as 1969, Redford had served as the executive producer for Downhill Racer. The political satire The Candidate (1972) was a moderate box office and critical success.
Personal life
On August 9, 1958, Redford married Lola Van Wagenen in Las Vegas. A second reception was held at Lola's grandmother's home on September 12. They had four children: Scott Anthony Redford (September 1, 1959 – November 17, 1959), Shauna Jean Redford (b. November 15, 1960), David James Redford (May 5, 1962 – October 16, 2020), and Amy Hart Redford (b. October 22, 1970).
Redford and Van Wagenen never publicly announced a separation or divorce, but in 1982, entertainment columnist Shirley Eder reported that the pair "have been very much apart for a number of years." In 1991, Parade magazine stated "it is unclear whether the divorce has been finalized." Many websites say they were divorced in 1985.
Scott Redford died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 21⁄2 months and is buried at Provo City Cemetery in Provo, Utah. Shauna Redford is a painter and married to journalist Eric Schlosser. James Redford was a writer and producer, while Amy Redford is an actress, director, and producer. Redford has seven grandchildren.
On July 11, 2009, Redford married his longtime girlfriend, Sibylle Szaggars, at the Louis C. Jacob Hotel in Hamburg, Germany. She had moved in with Redford in 1996 and shared his home in Sundance, Utah.
In May 2011, Robert Redford: The Biography was published by Alfred A. Knopf, written by Michael Feeney Callan over fifteen years with Redford's input and drawn from his personal papers and diaries.
- 6 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
- 6 slices Swiss cheese (1 ounce each)
- 1/4 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced (optional)
- 1 can (10-3/4 ounces) condensed cream of chicken soup
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 2 cups herb-seasoned classic stuffing mix
- 8 tablespoons butter, melted
- Preheat oven to 350º. Coat a 9- x 13-inch baking dish with cooking spray.
- Place chicken in prepared baking dish. Top each piece with a slice of Swiss cheese. Arrange sliced mushrooms over cheese, if desired.
- In a small bowl, mix together soup and wine; pour over chicken. Sprinkle stuffing mix over top, and drizzle on melted butter.
- Bake 35 to 40 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through and no pink remains.
1935 – Lee Remick, American actress (d. 1991)
On December 14th, National Alabama Day recognizes the Heart of Dixie.
The 22nd state to join the union, Alabama has played pivotal roles in U.S. history, scientific advancements and its magnificent landscapes attract visitors from far and wide.
Alabama enjoys 60 miles of shoreline along the Gulf Coast. While the coastal region is dotted with swamps and bayous, it also includes beautiful sandy beaches. Move northward from the coast, and the lowlands provide the fertile soils of the Black Belt, land that long yielded productive cotton crops. The Northern half of the state is dominated by the forested hills and valleys of the Appalachians.
As the original capital of the Confederacy until May of 1861 during the American Civil War, the small town of Montgomery set the stage for the secessionist government. Nearly 100 years later, the Civil Rights Movement would find a home and erupt across the state marching its vision to the rest of the country.
Agriculture, Military and Meat & Three
Bringing diversity to agriculture at a time when the boll weevil was wreaking havoc on cotton crops, George Washington Carver provided the opportunity for successful planting and harvesting of a legume that continues to be popular not only in the south but across the United States. The peanut brought new farming methods and agricultural stability to a suffering southern industry.
Home of the 332nd Fighter Group, the first African American military aviators, the science team that helped put man on the moon, and the first African American woman in space, Alabama is another state that keeps looking to the sky.
In Alabama, and all across Southern states, the meat and three will fill you up with more satisfying comfort food than you can find anywhere other than your mother’s kitchen. The restaurant style includes a mouth-watering homemade meat of your choosing – crispy fried chicken, juicy sweet ham or tender roast beef – and then a selection of three sides. A roll and dessert are usually included as well. All this is served in a relaxed, down home atmosphere.
