In contrast to his well-planned film career, with smooth transitions from one role to another, his pre-Hollywood days were marked by waywardness. Chucking a high-school baseball scholarship to become a painter, Redford drifted across the USA committing petty thefts and doing odd jobs. The steadiest one was that of a jack-hammer man on a Californian oil field, where he shovelled oil slicks and cleared pipelines. He once worked in construction but was sacked for losing his tools. After several such false starts, he landed up in Broadway and soon in Hollywood.

Redford made his film debut in War Hunt (1962), playing a young private in the Korean war up against a trigger-happy fellow soldier. His first major role was in the Neil Simon comedy Barefoot in the Park (1967), where he co-starred with Jane Fonda. The part which made him a star was that of the Sundance Kid, an on-the-run outlaw, in George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Redford’s charisma, coupled with his sense of humour, was on full display here as he teamed up wonderfully with Paul Newman. Remember the naughty scene in which he makes Katherine Ross do a striptease at gunpoint?

Interestingly, the part of the Sundance Kid was first offered to Paul Newman while Marlon Brando was asked to play Butch Cassidy. However, as Brando said no (and so did Steve McQueen), Newman played Butch and Redford became Sundance. He got the role in George Roy Hill’s next venture, The Sting, after Jack Nicholson turned it down. Consequently, the hit team of Newman and Redford delivered the goods again, with the latter earning his solitary Oscar nomination for best actor.

With Downhill Racer (1969), Redford entered production, having set up his own company, Wildwood Enterprises. It gave him greater freedom to take up subjects of his choice.

The 1976 film about the Watergate Scandal, All the President’s Men, owed much to Redford’s initiative for its success. He acquired the rights to the book by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward for $ 450,000 within a month of its publication. He persuaded Dustin Hoffman to play Bernstein and cast himself as Woodward. Alan J. Pakula, who had just made a superb political thriller, The Parallax View, was picked as director and William Goldman was roped in for the screenplay. The result was a riveting docudrama which created a sensation and won four Oscars.

Realising in the late 1970s that he was "too mature, mentally and soon physically, to continue being any kind of sex symbol", Redford turned to direction with Ordinary People (1980), the story of a family torn apart by guilt. Made with sensitivity and intelligence, the film received rave reviews. Film critic Kenneth Turan observed with irony: "Never a very expressive actor, Redford as director revealed a depth of feeling he couldn’t manage in front of the camera." To top it all, he won the Oscar for the Best Director .

The success of Ordinary People encouraged Redford to spread his wings more widely. He founded the appropriately-named Sundance Institute to enable aspiring film-makers to learn the art and craft of cinema. The Sundance Film Festival, which celebrated its 20th birthday earlier this year, is considered to be America’s most important showcase for works by independent film-makers. Notwithstanding allegations that it has become commercialised, the festival has discovered offbeat gems like the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple and Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, lies and videotape, besides nurturing the talent of people like Quentin Pulp Fiction Tarantino.

In the past decade or so, Redford’s screen appearances have been few and far between. As a director, he has consolidated his reputation with A River Runs Through It (1992), another emotion-rich family saga, and Quiz Show (1994), a satire which lifts the lid off a popular 1950s TV show. The Horse Whisperer (1998), the only film having Redford as both actor and director, showed that he could handle both roles together fairly well.

What about Redford the political animal? Well, The Candidate and All the President’s Men revealed that he had more than a passing interest in politics. A votary of liberalism, Redford has been vociferous in expressing his distaste for the skulduggery in American politics.

His response to the September 11, attacks has been quite mature. While denouncing the attacks, he has added in the same breath : "It’s important to wonder if anybody is going to stand back and ask :Why this happened, why do these people hate America?" (Incidentally, he narrowly missed becoming a victim of this tragedy. He was in New York on September 10 and planned to fly to San Francisco that night or the next morning. Luckily, he chose the first option, for Tuesday’s New York-San Francisco flight was one of the two to crash into the World Trade Center).

Talking about himself, Redford eagerly tries to highlight the difference between the man and the myth. " Most interviews make me look so perfect, so lucky, so one-dimensional. I can be terrifically irresponsible and selfish," he claims. However, no matter how hard he tries to convince his fans of his ordinariness, for them his actions—and his looks—will always speak louder than his words.