“Environmentalist” and gay-rights actor Robert Redford predictably found friendly audiences when he spoke at Colby and Bowdoin.
Redford, who died Tuesday, was known more for his good looks than his leftist agenda. But he used both to equal advantage.
Ten years ago Democrat Redford warned of – what else? – “division in America” in a commencement address at Colby College.
The liberal Colby audience, of course, loved the juice, and the Waterville school gave him an honorary degree for singing its tune.
Redford’s graduating grandson was in the audience when gramps spoke of “the face of challenges like climate change and political division.”
The actor later broke from Hollywood and formed his own independent film festival in Utah, specifically to promote what he called the “diversity” of independent filmmaking, but his liberal Tinseltown politics never left him.
Redford also appeared in several political narratives.
He satirized campaigning as a liberal idealist running for U.S. senator in 1972’s “The Candidate” and uttered one of the more memorable closing lines, “What do we do now?” after his character managed to win.
And of course, in the film “All the President’s Men,” he played a Washington Post reporter, Bob Woodward, who helped bring down a Republican president, Richard Nixon.
Redford invoked the film during his Colby appearance.
He also appeared at Bowdoin College in 1982, talking about the “price of fame.” He claimed he had always wanted to just be an ordinary person. (Nothing like making a highly publicized speech and simultaneously complaining you prefer privacy.)
Redford was a staunch supporter of the Democrat Party and an outspoken liberal activist, particularly known for his long-standing advocacy for environmental causes, such as stopping a Utah coal-fired power plant in the 1970s, and for LGBTQ+ rights.
Though the only ballot he was brave enough to put his name on was made of acetate, he used his celebrity to champion causes like indigenous rights and climate change, endorsing former Presidents Barack Obama and then Joe Biden for president.
He was a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, whom he called a “dictator.”
The guy from Tinseltown said Trump had “no moral compass.”
Irony defined.
