Robert Redford stars in classic multi-Oscar award-winning crime drama Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid this morning. Based loosely on fact, the film tells the story of Wild West fugitives Robert LeRoy Parker, known as Butch Cassidy, and partner Harry Longabaugh, known as the Sundance Kid. After a train robbery goes disastrously wrong, they find themselves on the run with the law hot on their heels.
Their solution sees them head to Bolivia, where they soon return to their old ways, attempting to pull off yet another bank robbery and avoid the local police.
The 1969 classic won a host of awards, including a BAFTA for Robert and a number of other awards.
The film ultimately proved a catalyst for Robert’s career, shooting him to stardom and landing him roles in All the President’s Men among others.
Some 16 years on from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Robert played the male lead in Sydney Pollack’s Out of Adrica, with Meryl Streep in the opposite role.
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The film was Robert and Sydney’s most successful of their seven together, but it wasn’t all plain sailing.
Robert admitted in 2019 book Queen Meryl that he “probably got along too well” with co-star Meryl on the set.
Sydney, however, didn’t care for the pair’s connection, and actively discouraged it at every opportunity.
Robert said: “It caused ripples.
“That wasn’t easy to deal with, because I felt I was in a vise and I became resentful.”
Out of Africa, set in 20th Century colonial Kenya, sees Danish baroness Karen Blixen (played by Meryl) discover that her husband is unfaithful.
As a result, she embarks on an affair with big-game hunter Denys (played by Robert).
Karen is forced to choose between her newfound romance and her own personal future.
While some had questioned Robert’s performance in the film, labelling it “wooden”, Meryl completely disagreed.
She said he was “subtle — and just right”.
She had, however, previously admitted that she once had a “big crush” on Robert, which might have had something to do with such a positive opinion.
Meryl later admitted that Robert was the “best kisser I ever met in the movies”.
Despite their on-screen romance, rumours the the pair were a real-life couple are completely unfounded. Both have been in long-term marriages.
Meryl married sculptor Don Gummer in 1978, and the pair have four children together, all of whom are extremely successful in the entertainment industry.
Robert, meanwhile, married his longtime partner Sibylle Szaggars in July 2009.
The couple had been living together since the Nineties, sharing his home in Sundance, Utah.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid airs on ITV4 at 10:50am today.