Why Redford welcomes wrinkles

Robert Redford’s good looks haven’t always worked in his favor, said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. His natural popularity with girls from an early age caused a vicious backlash among the boys at his Los Angeles school. “Pretty soon it became a regular thing where guys would pass me when I was with a girl and say, ‘ARF! ARF! ARF!’” The actor was appalled to discover that ARF stood for the Anti-Redford Federation. “I was so hurt and shocked,” he says. “From that point in my life, I retreated into a more loner place. I was then forever shy of going out and expressing myself, and I would do it in my art.” When Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid turned Redford into a household name and sex symbol, he told himself, “This is great. I think I’ll roll with this for a while.’’ But some “out of whack” fan experiences made him withdraw again. “It got harder and harder,” he says, “and then it got exhausting.” That’s why the 77-year-old is actually happy to be aging. “The nice thing about getting older is that you don’t have that quite so much anymore.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up