With a movie career spanning over 60 years, Robert Redford made his mark in Hollywood with classics like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and All the President’s Men. He even won an Oscar for his directing debut in 1980 for Ordinary People. Then, in 2018, he starred in what he said at the time would be his final movie, The Old Man and the Gun. Redford was 82-years-old when he made the film in which he played Forrest Tucker, a career criminal and prison escape artist. Since then the star has narrated a couple of films in 2018 American fantasy drama Buttons: A Christmas Tale. He also voiced Lokia The Dolphin Monster in 2020 comedy anthology movie Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia. But in terms of on-screen acting, he secretly shot a cameo for a 2019 Marvel blockbuster, which ended up being his last live-action role.
In 2014, Redford starred as the villain of MCU movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier. His character was a reimagining of comic book character Alexander Pierce. The actor’s take was a senior official within espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D. who was secretly the leader of its enemy Hydra within it. Samuel L Jackson’s character Nick Fury killed him, but The Sting star reprised the role in 2019 Marvel epic Avengers Endgame. The latter saw the superhero team travel back in time to the events of the first Avengers movie in 2012.
After defeating Loki and obtaining the Tesseract aka the Space Stone, Redford’s Pierce, who wasn’t to die for two years, approached Iron Man and demanded that S.H.I.E.L.D. (which we now know was Hydra) take the Infinity gem. After all, it had previously been in their hands before. Since then, archive footage of Redford’s Pierce also featured at the start of the 2021 Disney+ show Loki. Part of the Avengers Endgame scene was replayed showing the 2012 Loki variant escaping with the Tesseract before being apprehended by the Time Variance Authority. In 2019, the Watchmen TV series also featured The Sting star’s likeness as President Redford in its first episode.