The actor who inspired Robert Redford’s career: “He carried the weight”
It’s always interesting to trace the influences that shaped the trajectories of the biggest stars in Hollywood, but it’s not always easy to identify because of the sheer number of sources of inspiration that move artists. However, for Robert Redford, that particular question has never been a difficult one, as he has answered it himself on multiple occasions.
Among the handful of big names who earned critical acclaim both as an actor and a filmmaker, Redford has demonstrated countless times that he has what it takes on both sides of the camera. Ranging from his iconic performances in era-defining works like All the President’s Men to his award-winning directorial debut feature Ordinary People, with which he hit the ground running as an auteur, Redford’s considerable accomplishments themselves inspire many aspiring artists.
During the Q&A session following a conversation with Amy Taubin, Redford was once asked about his affinity for working with older actors and how they influenced his outlook on filmmaking. The American director took the opportunity to single out one name in particular: Melyn Douglas, the icon who collaborated with the likes of Ernst Lubitsch on unforgettable gems like Ninotchka.
Redford said, “Well, I don’t know that I can answer the whole question. I can tell you what I felt about the older actors like Melvyn Douglas. Melvyn Douglas had been acting in films since the mid-1930s, and I think what it was about older actors is that they carried such weight with themselves. They carry such experience, so many years of living, and it’s just in them, as actors and as human beings.”
It’s definitely easy to understand why Redford was awed by the performances of Melvyn Douglas and his contemporaries when he first watched them, but it’s also interesting to note how working with them in their later years influenced Redford’s understanding of directing actors. It was his experiences with Douglas during the production of the 1972 political comedy The Candidate that almost flipped a switch for him.
Penned as an incisive satire of the grotesque ways in which political campaigns find form in the USA, both Redford and Douglas deliver fantastic performances, bolstered by Jeremy Larner’s superb writing for which he won an Academy Award. According to Redford, it was Douglas’s decades of experience in the industry and the way in which he channelled it into the screenplay that was a major reason behind the film’s success.
“I just felt that that was a wonderful quality to see,” Redford added. “And I think that in The Candidate, Melvyn Douglas had it, and it was wonderful working with him, because I just think he carried the weight of all those years of having success and so forth. And I’m playing a son that hasn’t had that yet and putting us together, you can see the effect he has on me, and that I can’t live up to what he is. So you want to have an actor that sends that signal out.”
While The Candidate wasn’t directed by Redford, the production made him realise the importance of having veterans on your team and the value of their insights, which is why he often made the decision to cast older and more experienced actors in his directorial era.
