The ageless Robert Redford, a heartthrob and LGBTQ+ ally all his life, began his career with a queer role

"Robert Redford was 89 years old, but if I'm honest, I never thought of him as old. Not once, even when I read about him in recent years and saw his picture, usually at the opening of the Sundance Film Festival he founded. Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter. To me, and I suspect to many gay men of my generation, he was eternally golden. Someone like Redford never really gets "old.""

"The blond hair, the chiseled chin, the kind of hypnotic blue eyes that were always mesmerizing. Back in the day, I usually described Redford like this: "It was as if God paused for a moment before he created Redford and said, 'How can I outdo myself with this guy?'" I don't think there's anyone above a certain age who didn't carry some kind of crush on Robert Redford, no matter who they were. He was impossibly handsome, yet he never seemed untouchable."

"There was a softness to him, a gentleness that stood out in an era of swaggering, gruff movie stars like Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, and Charlton Heston, who seemed too harsh. At least to me. Redford could play a cowboy or an outlaw with all the virility in the world, but he always gave off this aura of kindness. It was masculinity without cruelty. He might have shot some guns and beat up people, but he didn't exude fear."

Robert Redford remained visually youthful and perpetually attractive, especially to gay men who admired his golden, mesmerizing presence. He combined striking physical features with a softness and gentleness that contrasted with tougher mid-20th-century movie stars. Redford could portray virile roles—cowboys and outlaws—while conveying kindness and masculinity without cruelty. His early role as Wade Lewis in Inside Daisy Clover presented gay undertones and challenged norms for a straight actor in the mid-1960s, earning him a Golden Globe new star award. That combination of charm, ambiguity, and risk contributed to his enduring cultural appeal.

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