In addition to his acting and directing, Redford helped found the Sundance Festival, helping it become the powerhouse it is today for independent film. He was also a committed campaigner for environmental causes.

Some of Redford’s most famous films included 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1985’s Out of Africa and 1976’s All the President’s Men.

Redford won an Oscar not as an actor but as a director for the 1980 film Ordinary People. His only acting Oscar nomination came from 1973’s The Sting.

Despite that lack of nominations, Redford was a huge Hollywood star who had top billing in his movies and could pivot from thrillers to comedies with ease.

In 2018, Redford told Entertainment Weekly he was retiring from acting.

“Never say never, but I pretty well concluded that this would be it for me in terms of acting. … I can’t last forever.”

It came just a couple of years after he admitted to being “tired” of his career.

Despite the actor’s previous criticisms of him, Donald Trump was among the first to publicly react to his death, speaking just before boarding Air Force One to begin his state visit to the UK.

“Wow, that’s a good way to go, I guess. But I’ll tell you, Robert Redford was great. He had a series of years where there was nobody better,” the President told reporters, adding that he’d made “seven or eight great movies”.

“There was a period of time when he was the hottest. I thought he was great.”

In a column for NBC in 2019, Redford likened Trump to a dictator.

“Our shared tolerance and respect for the truth, our sacred rule of law, our essential freedom of the press and our precious freedoms of speech – all have been threatened by a single man,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, Redford’s Out of Africa co-star and friend Meryl Streep described the star as a “lion”.

“One of the lions has passed. Rest in peace my lovely friend,” she said.

Director Ron Howard praised him as a “tremendously influential cultural figure for the creative choices made as an actor/producer/director”, acknowledging his role in launching Sundance and becoming an “artistic gamechanger”.

Famed author Stephen King wrote on X: “Robert Redford has passed away. He was part of a new and exciting Hollywood in the 70s and 80s. Hard to believe he was 89.”

Redford was also branded a “genius” by actor Marlee Matlin, one of the stars of Oscar-winning film Coda, which premiered at Sundance.

“…Coda came to the attention of everyone because of Sundance. And Sundance happened because of Robert Redford. A genius has passed.”

Redford was born in 1936 in Santa Monica, California, close to Los Angeles. He lost his mother when he was a teenager after a difficult birth of twin girls who also died. He remained an only child. Redford dabbled in theatre – even making it to Broadway – before turning to film.

Redford is survived by his wife Sibylle Szaggars Redford, whom he married in 2009, and his children Shauna, James and Amy. He had four children in total, all from his from his first wife Lola Van Wagenen whom he married in 1958. Scott, his youngest son, died just two months after his birth.

Redford received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honour an American civilian can receive, from then-President Barack Obama in 2016.