Robert Redford Makes a Huge Announcement About His Acting Career

You might know him from iconic films like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Sting,” “The Natural,” “The Way We Were,” and “All the President’s Men,” and now? He’s taking a step back from his career in the biggest way.

Robert Redford, who has been acting in movies or on TV since the 1960s, has recently announced he’ll be retiring from what he’s been doing all his life.

“Never say never, but I pretty well concluded that this would be it for me in terms of acting, and [I’ll] move towards retirement after this ’cause I’ve been doing it since I was 21,” Redford said. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s enough. And why not go out with something that’s very upbeat and positive?’”

While it does come as a huge surprise, and a huge loss in the industry, at the same time it’s not all that shocking. After all, the man is 81 years old and has been doing this gig for 60 years.

He also prefaced his retirement in an interview in 2016 when he said he had two more movies in him, but then he was probably going to retire.

“I’ve got two acting projects in the works,” he told his grandson Dylan Redford in the interview. “Once they’re done, then I’m going to say, ‘Okay, that’s goodbye to all that,’ and then just focus on directing.”

And that’s just what he did—last year, he starred in “Our Souls at Night,” and his final flick ever, “The Old Man & The Gun,” which is set to come out September 28. In “Our Souls at Night,” he starred alongside Jane Fonda, which tells a love story for older people who get a second chance in life, and “Old Man with a Gun” is a more down to earth movie, starring Casey Affleck and Sissy Spacek.

That said, Redford did mention he might just focus on directing. So he probably won’t completely, 100 percent put his retirement jacket on just yet. He’ll likely still be behind the cameras directing films. Additionally, being one of the founders, he’ll still be attending the Sundance Film Festival at Park City for many more years.

Besides the obvious—being in your 80s and working for 60 years straight—what exactly was the reason Redford decided to retire? In the same 2016 interview, he said he was honestly just getting a little tired of acting.

“I’m getting tired of acting,” he had said. “I’m an impatient person, so it’s hard for me to sit around and do take after take after take. At this point in my life, it’d give me more satisfaction because I’m not dependent on anybody. It’s just me, just the way it used to be, and so going back to sketching—that’s sort of where my head is right now.”

We can’t really blame him—but we’ll sure miss his movies and are definitely going to plan some sort of Robert Redford movie marathon soon!

What about you—are you a Robert Redford fan? What’s your favorite movie with him in it? Did you ever think the day would come when he’d retire from acting?