“Robert Redford Originally Pursued a Different Career Before Becoming an Actor”
Before Hollywood: Robert Redford’s Journey from Struggling Artist to Cinematic Legend. Before the fame, fortune, and film festivals, Robert Redford was a young man with a very different dream. In a 2016 interview, Redford revealed that he originally pursued a career in art. After leaving college in the U.S., he traveled across Europe in his late teens, living out of a backpack, staying in hostels, and hitchhiking from one city to another. At one point, he arrived in Cannes, France — not as a celebrity, but as a broke traveler with a sleeping bag. He couldn’t afford a room, so he slept under a pier just steps away from the glamorous Hotel Carlton. Years later, that same hotel would host him as an honored guest during the Cannes Film Festival. Standing on its balcony, he looked down at the beach…