Bob Woodward paid tribute to Robert Redford, who died Tuesday morning at age 89, by sharing some quotes from their conversations over the past decade, as the actor-director weighed in on Donald Trump, freedom and independence.
“I loved him, and admired him — for his friendship, his fiery independence, and the way he used any platform he had to help make the world better, fairer, brighter for others,” Woodward wrote on X.
Redford acquired rights to Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s All the President’s Men in 1974, leading to one of the great journalism movies — and political thrillers — of all time. It not only explained Watergate to general audiences, but elevated the role of investigative reporters. In fact, when “Deep Throat” was revealed to be Mark Felt in 2005, Chris Matthews of NBC News’ Hardball interviewed Redford, who played Woodward in the film, for his reaction.
Redford’s involvement in the Watergate story predated the book. It was Redford, Woodward wrote in a statement, who “urged Carl Bernstein and myself to tell the Watergate story through the eyes and experiences of our reporting, and the relations between the two of us.”
“His impact and his influence on my life cannot be overstated,” Woodward wrote.
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Woodward also shared quotes that he has gathered from Redford during interviews he recorded over the past decade.
On New Year’s Eve 2021, Redford said he had rewatched All the President’s Men a few days earlier and “I was just taken aback at how appropriate it was, how timely it was, and how little has really changed. We don’t have Nixon anymore, we have Trump.”
“We live in a country where we can’t call ourselves the United States of America,” Redford told Woodward. “We just can’t. We’re the Divided States of America because of the political parties and they’re so robust in their anxieties.”
In September 2022, Woodward wrote that he told Redford that his reporting showed that Trump was trying to destroy democracy. “He doesn’t understand it,” Redford said. “So it’s easy for him to destroy it. It’s easy to destroy something you don’t understand. You can claim it doesn’t exist.”
Redford also talked of himself having an “outlaw sensibility.”
“I’ve always been independent. I’ve always wanted to stay free. Freedom is very important to me. I didn’t want to go anywhere, do anything where my freedom was going to be thwarted. And of course, when you’re that focused on freedom, you’re also focused on independence. So I wanted to be independent.”
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