It looks like Robert Redford is sticking to his word and is ready to retire from acting. The Academy Award-winning actor and director announced that his upcoming role in the David Lowery-directed The Old Man & the Gun will be his last, Deadline has confirmed.
In a recent interview with EW, Redford said: “Never say never, but I pretty well concluded that this would be it for me in terms of acting, and [I’ll] move towards retirement after this ’cause I’ve been doing it since I was 21.”
He continued to say that his role in The Old Man & the Gun led him to decide that this would be his final hurrah as an actor. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s enough. And why not go out with something that’s very upbeat and positive?'”
In the crime comedy, Redford stars alongside Casey Affleck, Danny Glover, Tika Sumpter, Tom Waits and Sissy Spacek as the real-life Forrest Tucker a career criminal and prison escape artist. The Fox Searchlight film is set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and will open in theaters Sept. 28.
In 2016, Redford was interviewed by his grandson and said that he’ll retire from acting after his next two movies are finished. “I’ve got two acting projects in the works,” he told Dylan Redford. “Once they’re done, then I’m going to say, ‘Okay, that’s goodbye to all that,’ and then just focus on directing.”
That said, Redford isn’t totally stepping out of the industry spotlight. We can expect the Oscar-winning Ordinary People director to helm more films and, as one of the founders, he’ll make his way to Park City for the Sundance Film Festival for years to come.
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