Robert Redford is a star that will keep shimmering
As the 2018 heatwave comes to an end, here is a picture of the eternally cool Robert Redford, who has announced that, at the age of 82, he is retiring from movies. In Out of Sight, a terrific George Clooney film, Jennifer Lopez finds herself in the boot of a car snuggled tight with her leading man. “What are you thinking about?” smirks Gorgeous George. “The young Robert Redford,” sighs Lopez.
Heart-throbs wax and wane. For some women, including me, Redford remains the fairest of them all. In The Way We Were, dressed in a white naval uniform, he fell asleep on a bar stool and a besotted Barbra Streisand reached out her scarlet fingernails to trace the contours of his perfection. The little-boy look with its fierce perplexity, that make-hay-while-thesun-shines hair plus the greatest smile in all cinema.
I interviewed him 20 years ago and, admitting that he’d thought about what a little nip and tuck might do, he gathered the skin under his chin and pulled it back. For just a second, I was so happy and so sad: for staring back was a young Robert Redford.
His golden era was the Sixties and the Seventies, but movie stars, much like real stars, exert radiance long after their core has cooled. He shimmers still.