Robert Redford to Receive Honorary Cesar Award

By Elsa Keslassy

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Legendary American actor and director Robert Redford is set to receive an honorary Cesar award, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, at the 44th annual Cesar ceremony, which will take place Feb. 22 in Paris.

“An iconic actor, an exceptional director, a passionate producer, founder and president of Sundance, the most revered festival of independent films in the world, has left his mark through all his endeavors in the film world,” said Alain Terzian, the president of France’s Academy of Arts and Techniques of Cinema.

In the statement announcing Redford’s honorary Cesar, Terzian praised Redford’s career as an actor, filmmaker and philanthropist.

“Robert Redford is definitely a monument. Many of his films, in front or behind the camera, have now become classics. Rare are the careers which have had such a lasting impact on the history of cinema,” said Terzian, citing Redford’s Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning film “Ordinary People,” which marked his directorial debut, as well as “Barefoot in the Park,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Candidate,” “The Way We Were,” and “Out of Africa.”

Redford, who began his acting career on Broadway in the play “Tall Story” in 1959, was previously honored with the Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Redford said last summer that he planned on retiring after his latest film, “The Old Man and the Gun,” directed by David Lowery, but he later said he had perhaps spoken too soon.

He’s an executive producer of Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s “The Mustang,” which stars Matthias Schoenaerts as Roman Coleman, a violent convict who participates in a rehabilitation therapy program involving the training of wild mustangs.

Past recipients of the honorary Cesar include Penelope Cruz, George Clooney, Michael Douglas, Meryl Streep and Sean Penn.