At 88, This Actor Found Love Again After Facing Deep Personal Losses
This 88-Year-Old Actor Lost 2 Sons, Though Got a 2nd Chance at Love with 2 Decades Younger Wife – His Story
He once organized a fundraiser to combat the illness that killed his first kid. He found himself traveling from New York to Omaha every weekend while directing a big movie in order to be close to his sick kid.
He now works with a woman whose art crosses continents and whose vision aligns with his own in his late 80s.
His early adulthood was more influenced by survival than by fame, even though he would go on to receive praise for decades in television and movies.
He was a college dropout painting in Europe before taking acting training and landing famous roles. He was then a newlywed struggling to make ends meet in New York.
His personal life, which was characterized by both adversity and ambition, started in earnest there.
Later, when his career took off, his private life continued to be filled with silent struggles, ranging from decades-long traumatizing losses to life-threatening illnesses in his family.
He kept going forward in spite of everything, embracing his duties and his art. Even while partnerships came and went, a fortuitous encounter in the late 1990s would pave the way for a long-term partnership.
His work in movies that are still relevant today shaped his career over the course of five decades.
He appeared in both “All the President’s Men” in 1976 and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” in 1969.
He directed “Ordinary People,” which won several Oscars, and appeared in “The Natural” in the 1980s.
The actor has always been taciturn in interviews and cautious about how much of himself he displayed on screen during his career.
He gained a reputation for establishing limits in ways that even his co-stars found notable.
According to Jane Fonda, who played his opposite in “Barefoot in the Park” and “The Electric Horseman,” “He disliked kissing.” [To him] I never mentioned anything at all.
Additionally, he’s constantly in a foul temper, and I’ve always blamed myself.” Nevertheless, she said, “He’s a very good person.”
His early passion in art led to his studies in acting. He grew up in Van Nuys, California, after being born in Santa Monica on August 18, 1936.
He was offered a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado after high school, but he left in his sophomore year.
Later, the producer and actor called himself “the campus drunk” and said that he fled before anything solidified.
After that, he painted for a year in Europe before coming back to Los Angeles. The most influential period of his early life began with that homecoming.
He met Lola Van Wagenen, a 17-year-old bank teller, who lived in an apartment complex in Los Angeles.
After getting married in 1958, the couple soon relocated to New York City. He studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts after enrolling at the Pratt Institute of Art.
Collins, a stockbroker and acquaintance, remembered meeting the couple at that time. The friend remarked, “Even then, he had charisma,” “People really noticed him.
” He said, “I first met [him] and his wife when they were living on bouillon on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.” He and his wife suffered a terrible loss within the first year of their marriage.
They were still attempting to establish a life in New York when their five-month-old son passed away from sudden infant death syndrome in 1959.
Years later, he remarked, “That was a tough hit,” It was the first child we had. We were broke when we arrived in New York. It was quite difficult.
They had just recently traveled across the nation to start a life together, and they were both still quite young—she was 20 and he was 21.
Later on, he talked about how hard it was to comprehend what had occurred to him at that age. Additional kids showed up. However, he added, “something like that doesn’t get totally dismissed.”
Over the years, he collected funds to assist research into the ailment that killed his son, but he rarely discussed the event in public.
The couple had three more children after the death of their first: Shauna, David James, also known as Jamie, and Amy.
Both the early setbacks of his work and the subsequent emotional sorrows were shared by the couple, who stayed together for decades.
Their marriage withstood the loss of their first child and their son Jamie’s continuous health struggles. He had been protective of his private life for many years, and the divorce was no different.
His only public statement regarding the divorce was, “I got lost for a time.” Budd Schulberg, the screenwriter, once said he never thought the marriage would end.
“He assured me that he was completely devoted to his wife. They experienced a great deal together and were quite close.
He briefly dated actress Sonia Braga in the late 1980s following the divorce. Later on, he started dating costume designer Kathy O’Rear, a relationship that lasted until about 1995. There were difficulties in the years after the divorce.
For the most of his life, Jamie, the couple’s son, struggled with severe health issues. His long-term colitis finally developed into cirrhosis, necessitating two liver transplants in the 1990s. In 1993, he had one of the operations.
His father was directing “Quiz Show” in New York at the time, and he traveled to Omaha every weekend to visit Jamie in the hospital that he and his family had selected.
Following the first transplant’s failure, Jamie had a second procedure, which resulted in more issues.
His father said, “But now he’s fine,” at the moment. Jamie passed away at the age of 58 in October 2020. His liver’s bile-duct carcinoma was the cause.
A family representative posted a brief statement at the time of Jamie’s passing. “The grief is immeasurable with the loss of a child,” she stated.
“Jamie was a devoted father, husband, and son. His children, artwork, films, and unwavering commitment to environmental preservation and conservation all carry on his legacy,” she continued. The representative appealed for the family’s privacy during what she characterized as a trying moment, but his father did not issue a personal comment.
In the middle of the 1980s, Shauna too experienced a painful time. Sidney Wells, her longterm boyfriend, was killed in 1983.
She lost control of her Ford Bronco and collided with the icy Jordan River close to Salt Lake City just eight months later.
Dorine Staker Rivers, a local woman, jumped into the freezing water to assist in removing Shauna, who was only partially conscious, from the car. A few months later, Dorine first saw Robert Redford, Shauna’s father, at the premiere of “The Natural.”
“Saying thanks just isn’t enough,” he said, and she noted how moved he appeared to be. “I think he ran out of things to say. At that moment, he was just being a father.
Robert first encountered German-born abstract and environmental artist Sibylle Szaggars in the late 1990s. She had been involved in the art scene in Sundance, where the two met. Their bond became stronger with time, and in 2009, after more than ten years of dating, they were married.
With a nearly four-decade career, Sibylle is renowned for her work that combines performance art and environmental issues.
Europe, Asia, the US, and South America have all hosted exhibitions of her work. She worked with David Thor Jonsson, an Icelandic composer, in 2013.
They collaborated to create a staged art performance called “The Way of the Rain,” which combined spoken poetry, dance, visual art, and music.
She and Robert started working on “The Way of the Rain – Reflections on Earth,” a video series created in association with composer Tim Janis, during the COVID-19 epidemic.
The United Nations, Earth X, and National Geographic were among the organizations that screened the series. In a 2011 interview, he talked briefly about their life together.
He remarked, “She’s a very special person,” “She’s younger than I am, and European, which I like, so that’s a whole new life.”
Robert made his first on-screen appearance in years on March 9, 2025.
The appearance happened at the third season premiere of “Dark Winds,” a television show that follows Navajo tribal police officers in the Southwest in the 1970s.
In the episode, Robert plays chess with author George R. R. Martin, who also makes a cameo, while he is incarcerated.
Since the first season of the show, the scene has been discussed. The chess scene was filmed instead of Robert, who is an executive producer on the show, making an appearance in the Season 2 finale.
At Robert’s request, the scene was recorded on a closed set. “The experience of directing Robert left a lasting impression,” director Chris Eyre said.
He said, “Bob is so kind, and he was so nice on the day,” remembering the crew’s delight. “You’re doing a scene with Robert Redford—that’s incredible.”
Robert had not been on screen since “Avengers: Endgame,” which came out in 2019, in which he briefly played the same role from “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”
He voiced the following in the intervening years: HBO’s “White House Plumbers” in 2023, the experimental film “Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia” in 2020, and his wife’s theatrical play “The Way of the Rain – Hope for Earth” in 2024.
Robert, who is currently 88, has remained engaged in both his personal and creative lives. He continues to be active in environmental campaigning, frequently working with his wife, Sibylle, in addition to producing television and narrating multimedia projects.
“I still have energy,” he said in one interview, adding that he continues to play tennis, ski, and ride horses. I might begin to consider becoming older once that starts to slow down.
Robert claimed in 1998 that his four grandkids, who were born to Jamie and Shauna, called him “Bo-Pa” or “Ba-Poo,” depending on the child.
“The word grandfather is weird,” he remarked at the time. “It feels like some old guy in a robe.” Despite being most recognized for his multi-decade career in television and movies, Robert has always valued his off-screen position more.
“People think it’s been easy for me,” he stated. “The hardest thing in the world is when your children have problems.” In retrospect, he gave a straightforward account of his greatest achievement.
“I’ve produced some intriguing films, and I’m quite happy with the work, but if someone asked me, ‘What’s your greatest achievement?'” The kids, I would say. “I can’t imagine my life without them,” he said.
