The one role Robert Redford refused to reprise: “You leave certain things alone”
If it wasn’t for the final credit of an illustrious filmography, Robert Redford would have made it through his entire career without appearing in a sequel. That doesn’t sound like a massive accomplishment, but it is when compared to his ‘New Hollywood’ contemporaries.
Of all the stars who broke through in the 1960s and 1970s and dominated the silver screen for decades to come, virtually all of them reprised at least one role. Jack Nicholson played Garrett Breedlove and Jake Gittes twice, while Gene Hackman had the Superman franchise and The French Connection II.
Robert De Niro got his first follow-up out of the way with 1970’s Hi, Mom!, Al Pacino had the Godfather trilogy, Dustin Hoffman starred alongside De Niro in a pair of Fockers sequels and the Kung Fu Panda series, and even Redford’s great friend Paul Newman won his long-awaited Academy Award returning to ‘Fast’ Eddie Felson in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money.
Redford avoided all of that until the very end, when he technically reneged on his retirement by returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a brief cameo in Avengers: Endgame as Alexander Pierce, the character he’d previously debuted in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the only one he ever played twice.
He had his opportunities, but the actor and filmmaker always resisted. Ever the purist, Redford believed that some things are better left alone, which included several of his most notable films. Initially, he may have been wary of accepting the part, but Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were became one of his most acclaimed and indelible outings.
After winning two Oscars from six nominations to go along with a Golden Globe and two Grammy, not to mention the fact it recouped its budget ten times over at the box office, Columbia Pictures – and co-star Barbra Streisand – were keen to get a sequel off the ground. There was one obvious stumbling block: Redford wasn’t interested.
“They wanted to do it,” he admitted to Tom Putnam. “I still think it’s a mistake. You leave certain things alone. You did that, and it was a wonderful experience. It went a lot better than I ever thought. But it stands on its own. I think when you try to do a sequel, you’re trying to milk something that is better left alone. So I said, no, I won’t do a sequel.”
He’s got a point; after all, look what happened to The Sting. Redford and Newman’s original made more than quarter of a billion dollars at the box office and scooped seven Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’. A decade later, neither of them opted to come back for the sequel, which was critically savaged and best left forgotten.
