Robert Redford Announces Retirement From Acting

After having made almost 80 films, one of the all-time greats, Robert Redford, has announced that he’ll be retiring from acting. His career is almost unparalleled in Hollywood, having delivered timeless classics like The Sting, All The President’s Men, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, among countless others. Even in his later years he was still doing excellent work, in movies such as All is Lost and even Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Redford made the announcement during an interview at the Walker Art Center, saying the following:

“I’m getting tired of acting. I’m an impatient person, so it’s hard for me to sit around and do take after take after take,” he tells his grandson Dylan Redford in a recent career-spanning interview at Walker Art Center. “At this point in my life, age 80, it’d give me more satisfaction because I’m not dependent on anybody. It’s just me, just the way it used to be, and so going back to sketching—that’s sort of where my head is right now. So, I’m thinking of moving in that direction and not acting so much.”

Before he makes his retirement official, the actor does have two more projects that he still needs to complete, and he describes them as such:

“I’ve got two acting projects in the works: Our Souls at Night, with Jane Fonda, a love story for older people who get a second chance in life, and Old Man with a Gun, a lighter piece with Casey Affleck and Sissy Spacek. Once they’re done then I’m going to say, ‘Okay, that’s goodbye to all that,’ and then just focus on directing.”

Though his career behind the camera hasn’t been quite as impressive, it’s still nice to hear that Redford will remain involved in filmmaking by focusing on directing. After all, he’s delivered movies like Quiz Show and Ordinary People while in the director’s chair, so he obviously knows what he’s doing (let’s just forget about The Conspirator).

Aside from the aforementioned Our Souls at Night and Old Man with a Gun, Redford also has two other films set to release in the next year or so, according to iMDB. So that’s a total of four more times we’ll see the legend on the big screen. After that, it’ll be time to wave goodbye to one of the most accomplished acting careers the industry has ever seen.

Robert Redford will definitely be missed (in front of the camera, at least), but we wish him all the best with whatever he chooses to do once he retires from acting for good.