Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Redford formed one of Hollywood’s greatest double acts with Paul Newman in his breakthrough film, a hippy western about two outlaw buddies who flee to Bolivia to escape US authorities after robbing a series of banks and trains.
Based on a true story, the love triangle romance at its core took place to the tune of Burt Bacharach’s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”.
The film was also the beginning of a close friendship between Redford and Newman.
The Sting (1973)
Redford and Newman teamed up again as con artists in George Roy Hill’s “The Sting” (1973), which won Redford his only nomination for an Oscar for best actor.
Set in 1936 in Chicago, with a ragtime score, it tells the story of two grifters who carry out the ultimate con of a crime boss called Doyle Lonnegan, played by Robert Shaw.
The film, which won seven Oscars, is constructed like a play, with elaborate props, intrigue and music. The audience, which believes it is in on the conmen’s secret, ends up being duped too.
All the President’s Men (1976)
A classic American political thriller, Alan Pakula’s “All the President’s Men” tells the story of the probe by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein into the Watergate scandal that toppled President Richard Nixon.
Redford, who plays Woodward (Dustin Hoffman was Bernstein), was the driving force behind the film, which won four Oscars and which minutely detailed the journalists’ work investigating one of the biggest scandals in US political history.
“Forty-five years after Watergate, the truth is again in danger,” Redford said in the Washington Post in April 2017, comparing President Donald Trump’s hatred of journalists to that of the Nixon administration.
Out of Africa (1985)
Epic romance “Out of Africa” consecrated the Redford legend. He plays an indomitable big game hunter and aviator, with whom Meryl Streep falls in love against the jaw-dropping backdrop of the Kenyan savannah.
Redford was the archetype of the perfect if somewhat elusive lover, swooping down in his biplane to whisk writer Karen Blixen off for a romantic flight over the Maasai Mara game park or a picnic in the bush before disappearing for weeks on end.
Nominated for 11 Oscars, the adaptation of Blixen’s autobiography won seven Oscars and three Golden Globes. It is the sixth out of seven films Redford made with director Sydney Pollack.
The Horse Whisperer (1998)
Redford hit box office gold with Nicholas Evans’s story about a man with an extraordinary way with horses, which he both starred in and directed.
The classy tearjerker set in the remote mountains of Montana about bringing a badly injured teenager and her horse back from a very dark place, was also one of Scarlett Johansson’s breakthrough performances.
While it got an Oscar nomination, Redford did not get another of the statuettes he picked up for his directorial debut with “Ordinary People” in 1980.