Actor And Activist Robert Redford Might Not Be Ready To Retire Just Yet

ROBERT REDFORDDIDNT BREAK THE Watergate scandal.

- Stephanie Zacharek

But he played one of the guys who did, in All the President’s Men. He has also never run for public office. But he played a guy who did, in The Candidate. And he has never robbed a bank, though in his new movie, The Old Man & the Gun, he delighted in playing a real-life character who did so dozens of times and who, when he did get caught, managed 18 prison escapes—and attempted many more. “Normally, when you think of people robbing banks, you think of villains,” Redford said, during a relaxed meeting at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, the day after the film’s New York premiere. “This was just the opposite. This was a guy who was happy, just having a great time—not doing this for a living, just living life.”

If you consider the types of roles that have attracted him and take into account his longtime environmental activism, you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking of Redford as a guy with sturdy principles. But having principles doesn’t always mean following the rules: you can’t change the world, or have any fun, without breaking a few. Redford’s film career—not just as an actor but also as a producer and director—spans some 50 years. His directorial debut, 1980’s Ordinary People, won Best Picture that year, and he took home the Best Director prize too. In 1981, he cemented his commitment to independent filmmaking by founding the Sundance Institute. His devotion to environmental causes is just as strong: he has been a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council since 1975, and in 2015 he made an impassioned appeal at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris. He has written op-eds, in the Washington Post and in the pages of TIME, protesting the agenda of then EPA head Scott Pruitt.