Redford said his mother drove him to Yosemite—an over four-hour trip—in 1949, when the National Park Service was just 33 years old. The experience proved transformative for the future Oscar winner. “So she drove me to Yosemite. If you’re coming from Fresno, you go through a mile-long tunnel, and when we came out the other side, I was blown away,” Redford said. “We stopped to look at the view, and when I went to the edge—well, I said to myself, ‘I don’t want to look at this. I want to be in this.’”
Redford died peacefully “at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah—the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved,” according to his publicist Cindi Berger.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
