Robert Redford embodied an American ideal, and often lived the part, too

NEW YORK – Born during the Great Depression with sun-kissed California looks, Robert Redford never failed to epitomize something quintessential and hopeful about the American character.

Redford, who died Tuesday at the age of 89 , left a movie trail etched into land. He seemed to reside as much across the American landscape as he did on movie screens. He was in the Rocky Mountains of “Jeremiah Johnson,” the Wyoming grasslands of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” the Washington, D.C., alleyways of “All the President’s Men” and the Montana streams of “A River Runs Through It.”

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“From the time I was just a kid, I was always trying to break free of the bounds that I was stuck with, and always wanted to go outside,” Redford told The Associated Press in 2018 .

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