The Health Issues That Plagued Robert Redford's Family

Between his macho roles like a Western outlaw in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," a con man in "The Sting," or even the corrupt head of an agency in his later years in movies like "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," Robert Redford forever cemented himself as a certified Hollywood tough guy in his almost 65 years as an actor. Though his film roles often show Redford donning a stoic anti-hero persona that Hollywood found attractive 50 years ago, there lies more tragedy and emotional baggage underneath his rugged exterior which his performances may not show.

Throughout his life, Redford and his family were stricken with a series of serious illnesses. Redford, himself, even had his own run-in with a major disease, which entailed a case of polio he had when he was 11 years old. Though he said it wasn't a serious case, it was still frightening from a child's perspective at the time, considering he was bedridden for weeks and the lack of a polio vaccine. "It was a case of mild polio, but it was severe enough to put me in bed for two weeks," he said on the NPR radio show "Fresh Air" in October 2018. "It was alarming, but it wasn't serious enough to go much further."

While he was lucky enough to pull through from a minor instance of polio and live a long life, the same can't be said for some of his other family members, whom Redford has had to mourn throughout much of his life following different tragedies.

Although "All the President's Men" actor Robert Redford faced his own brief health scare when he was a kid, his illness was nothing compared to what other members of his family tragically faced throughout their lives. Redford was forced to grapple with the death of his mother Martha Redford from a hemorrhage when he was just 18 years old. Martha had developed a blood disorder after she miscarried twins, which subsequently caused hemorrhaging years later. Her death at age 40 was devastating to Redford, who cited her as one of the biggest reasons he found stardom. "The one person who stood behind me was my mother," he told Closer Weekly in February 2018. "She believed that all things considered, she just had faith that I had something in me that was going to turn out OK."

As if losing a parent so young wasn't enough tragedy for the actor to cope with, Redford again endured hardship when his son Scott died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1959, two months after his birth. Redford once again had to go through a moment every parent fears when his son James died from bile-duct cancer at age 58. 

Per Redford's representative, Cindi Berger, the death of James – whose son Dylan is definitely his grandfather's twin — was any parent's nightmare. "The grief is immeasurable with the loss of a child," she told People in October 2020. "His legacy lives on through his children, art, filmmaking, and devoted passion to conservation and the environment." With that notion in mind, one could only imagine what Redford has been through, considering he lost multiple children during his lifetime.