Redford is a complex and sometimes difficult man
ROBERT REDFORD is arguably the most interesting entertainment figure of his generation. Outstanding as an actor and as a director, he has also been a force in environmentalism and, through the Sundance Art Colony, has stimulated independent film production to an extraordinary degree.
From the beginning of his acting career, however, he was skittish around the trappings of celebrity and fame. He has a mind of his own, and is not afraid to express it, although those who work with him claim that the strength of his opinions is not matched by the speed of his decisions, which is somewhere between slow and static.
This reviewer has to confess to approaching Michael Feeney Callan’s biography with mixed, if not negative feelings. Feeney Callan’s biography of Sean Connery was a shallow, cut-and-paste job which left the reader little the wiser about the man, if somewhat better informed about the sequence of his films. That may have come about because of Connery’s notorious reluctance to be helpful to media people in general, and biographers in particular. When the man at the centre of the story won’t talk, it’s difficult to provide a full profile of him and of his life.
Robert Redford, in sharp contrast, seems to have given enormous amounts of his time to Michael Feeney Callan, and the biographer, in return, has done some service to the man, the material, and the reader. Redford emerges as a complex and at times difficult man. But then any artist who fights against the commercial and other pressures which might persuade him to keep delivering the same product again and again is going to be difficult, and Redford has the added complication of occasionally doing “mixture as before” work in order to finance what he believes in.
What emerges from this comprehensive biography is a picture of a star who does not wallow in success and who takes responsibility for failure. Some of his failures relate to his family life.
Redford does not seem to have been truly present to all of his children in their formative years. The difference between him and the majority of Hollywood stars of whom this can also be said is that Redford doesn’t make empty public statements of his love for his children and is a country mile away from the tawdry exploration of dire relationships represented by Ryan O’Neal’s reality TV programme about himself and his daughter, Tatum O’Neal. Instead, Redford responds as an adult to the needs of his adult children, and does so with commitment, generosity and insight.
Insight in all of Redford’s life has been won through constant analysis of his successes and failures, and — if we are to judge by the inputs to this book — his analysis manages to be detailed and unsparing, even of himself.
Redford can look back with pride on an unequalled body of superb, thoughtful and thought-provoking work. Michael Feeney Callan’s splendid biography is worthy of its subject.
