Robert Redford was a famous American actor and director. He was born in 1936. After his mother died, he became a rebellious teenager. He lost his baseball scholarship and was kicked out of college. Then he tried acting. He first worked on television and on stage. He became popular with the play and film Barefoot in the Park. In the late 1960s and 1970s, he became a big star. With Paul Newman, he made Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and later The Sting. These movies made him a superstar and a Hollywood icon. Redford did not want to be “just a pretty face,” so he chose his roles carefully. In 1980, he directed Ordinary People and won his first Oscar as a director. Beyond movies, he supported the environment and spoke out on politics. He also founded the Sundance Film Festival to help independent filmmakers. Redford believed in looking forward, not back. The report says he died at age 89 and remembers his long career and strong influence on cinema.
Vocabulary:
• legend (noun): a very famous and admired person.
• rebellious (adj): refusing to follow rules.
• scholarship (noun): money to study at school or college.
• to be kicked out (verb phrase): to be forced to leave a place.
• stage (noun): the place where actors perform in a theater.
• leading man (noun): the main male actor in a film or play.
• typecast (verb): to give an actor only the same kind of roles.
• blockbuster (noun): a very successful film that many people watch.
• icon (noun): a person seen as a symbol of greatness.
• to catapult (verb): to move someone to success very quickly.
• to team up (verb): to work together with someone.
• to direct (verb): to be the boss of making a film.
• environmentalist (noun): a person who wants to protect nature.
• pioneer (noun): someone who starts something new and important.
• independent filmmaker (noun): a movie maker not controlled by big studios.
• legacy (noun): what a person leaves behind in people’s memory.
• to look back (verb phrase): to think about the past.