By any standard measure, Robert Redford never quite fit the description of a person destined for greatness. He was raised in a working-class family on a predominantly Mexican block in Van Nuys, California, as the son of an accountant. Nothing about the neighborhood, the modest circumstances, or the restless energy of a child who would rather draw on the blackboard than listen to the teacher’s actual explanations screamed “future icon.” However, something was emerging in the periphery of what he himself called a “pretty bad” academic career.
A young Redford sat next to Don Drysdale, a future baseball pitcher, at Van Nuys High School, primarily searching for ways out. Rather than in textbooks, he discovered them in sports and art. “I was constantly at the blackboard,” he once said to NPR, “either being punished for things I’d done wrong, or drawing, telling a story.” The wide and early gap between institution and imagination may be a characteristic of many creative individuals at that age. The tension with Redford, however, seemed almost biographical. He was taking in the world in a different way, paying attention to what other people were passing.
He enrolled on a baseball scholarship at the University of Colorado in Boulder after graduating in 1954. He joined Kappa Sigma and worked shifts at The Sink, a campus bar that seemed to like him enough to eventually paint his likeness on the wall. However, Boulder was unable to hold him for very long. He lost his scholarship, began drinking excessively, and was ultimately expelled. The highlight-reel version of his life ignores this important detail. There’s a feeling that being expelled wasn’t just a sign of failure, but rather the start of a more sincere education that doesn’t take place in a classroom.
He traveled to Europe. Italy, Spain, and France. wandering in a way that only seems romantic in hindsight; at the time, it was probably just uncertain, broke, and a little exciting. Europe was the ideal place for Redford to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a painter. He enrolled in the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to pursue formal painting studies after returning to the United States. Later, Redford’s acquaintances told critic Carrie Rickey that you could hear a pin drop as soon as he entered the cafeteria. His appearance was so distracting. It seems that he was deeply conflicted about it, wanting to be recognized for his creations rather than his appearance.
Redford moved away from Pratt and toward theater. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan, where he graduated in 1959. Before acting took over completely, he worked in set design. The order of painting, Europe, art school, set design, and acting is worth stopping for. There was no plan. It was a series of decisions made by someone who was more motivated by instinct than by strategy. The majority of people who have such a patchy early record do not go on to win the Best Director Oscar. Redford did so in 1980 for Ordinary People, a movie that prevailed over Raging Bull, which is still one of Hollywood’s more subtly contentious Oscar choices.
By most standards, his formal education was lacking. No degree, no neat institutional narrative. What he did acquire was more difficult to measure: a sense of storytelling shaped by travel, an eye trained by painting, and a stubbornness about independence that would eventually give the world the Sundance Institute. He co-founded it in 1978, and what emerged from it—Tarantino, Soderbergh, and entire generations of filmmakers who would not have had a platform otherwise—is, in many respects, his most enduring reputation.
The irony in all of this is difficult to ignore. One of the most significant educational ecosystems in American cinema was created by the man who was unable to complete his degree. Robert Redford’s education took place everywhere but in the intended location. That could be the reason it was successful.
