Robert Redford died this week. To be honest, I wouldn’t have guessed he was 89. It struck me when I thought back about his movies how much they were part of my life, but maybe not the ones you’d think.

I never saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Never saw Jeremiah Johnson or The Candidate. Never saw The Way We Were or Barefoot In The Park or The Sting or The Natural (except the scenes any sports fan has seen) or Out Of Africa or A River Runs Through It or The Horse Whisperer or Ordinary People, his directorial debut for which he won so many awards.

Of the ones I have watched, many of which were lesser-known, I’m watched them A LOT. I watched Three Days Of The Condor a bunch as a teenager (and since) because my parents had it on VHS. I’ve watched All The President’s Men, Sneakers (another Dickinson household favourite growing up), Spy Game, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier more times than I can count. I watch Quiz Show, which he directed, probably twice a year.

It also JUST occurred to me as I was going through his IMDb listing that both his character in Sneakers and Brad Pitt’s character in Spy Game were named Bishop. Just now, despite having watched them dozens of times. Anyway.

Maybe I think fondly of him in these movies because he’s not really a sex symbol in any of them, except maybe Condor. He’s Bob Woodward. He’s an aging security consultant. He’s an underestimated spy. He’s a scheming bureaucrat. He’s funny. He’s charismatic. He was principled and he let his politics (which I agreed with, as far as I know) and environmentalism come through in his movies.

He was a talent, and he was a beauty, and he was a character, and he stood for something. There won’t be many more like him.