The actor Robert Redford called the best in the business: “As good as it gets”
With a career that lasted six decades and saw him work with the greatest actors of multiple generations, Robert Redford is in a pretty decent position to comment on which performer deserved to be called the absolute best of the best.
Is it controversial to say that he probably isn’t one of them? It depends. Redford was far from a bad actor, but he wasn’t on the same level as some of his peers who helped him define the ‘New Hollywood’ era, like Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, or his longtime friend Paul Newman.
From his two films with Jane Fonda in the 1960s to directing a young Scarlett Johansson in The Horse Whisperer almost 30 years later, Redford has also been up close and personal with stars at the beginning of their careers who’d go on to accomplish incredible things and become household names.
He’s also shared the screen with, been part of the same cast, or directed Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt, Donald Sutherland, Matt Damon, Will Smith, Tom Cruise, Mia Farrow, Faye Dunaway, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Glenn Close, Julie Christie, and Robert Duvall, all of whom have won Academy Awards or held their own in at least one masterpiece, and in many cases, both.
And yet, if he were pressed to name one person who stands alone as the profession’s pinnacle, he knows who’d get the nod. If anything, it might seem like the obvious choice, but if so many people are willing to go out on a limb and call Meryl Streep the greatest of all time, then it’s not without merit.
“There’s simply no finer craftsman in the business,” he told Us Weekly. “She’s as good as it gets.” The Oscars would certainly agree after Streep racked up a record-breaking amount of nominations, and her legendary status has reached such a point that she’s now spoken about in almost deified tones by her contemporaries, regardless of whether they’ve worked with her.
They’ve only made two films together, though, and they experienced vastly different fortunes. Redford and Streep developed such a bond during the production of Out of Africa that it made the former’s friend and frequent director, Sydney Pollack, simmer with what sounded an awful lot like jealous rage.
Still, he would have forgiven them for leaving him on the outside looking in when he won two of the film’s six Oscars for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’. Nearly 30 years down the line, they reunited, this time with the added star power of Cruise, only for Lions for Lambs to sink without a trace despite its impressive pedigree.
There’s nothing revelatory about an actor calling Streep the cream of the crop because it’s happened so often, but precisely because it’s happened so often, it rings truer than it does for most other stars.
