Bob Redford announced at 82 his retirement. . He has been acting since he was 22 starting out in Alfred Hitchcock and Twilight Zone shows in the late 50’s — my particular favorite is with Dame Gladys Cooper in “Nothing in the Dark.”
Like the other blond god, Steve McQueen, of 60-70’s cinema Redford dominated the Loew’s marquees and was a constant sellout. Tickets were $5.00, popcorn a dollar and soda 75 cents. That, the Army-Navy stores and the music was the best the era had to offer. Somewhere in there Woody Allen started making flicks that were amusing, you gotta see Bananas to believe it; t.v. was still worth watching. It seems almost surreal now.
Back to Bob, he was gorgeous and went from winning movie to winning movie. Barefoot in the Park, Butch Cassidy, Three Days of the Condor, Electric Horseman, Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We were, The Candidate, The Great Gatsby, All the President’s Men, The Sting. Then he went to directing and there was The Ordinary People and A River Runs Through it that critics called ordinary people gone fishing. I think that’s the wrong analogy, but that was the tag. He came back to acting and was in Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods which was like someone dreaming he was Jeremiah Johnson but not in Africa with Meryl Streep but in the Appalachians with Nick Nolte.
Redford was born in Santa Monica, southern California on August 18, 1936. He went to college and studied painting. Met his first wife Lola in 1956 and got married September 12, 1958, sixty years ago today. They had four children, the first one born in 1959, a boy named Scott who died of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome).
Lola encouraged his acting; it was a good move.
The official birth chart for Bob is at 8:02 PDT. It gives him a northern based bowl with a lone singleton Jupiter in its essential lord of Jupiter in the ninth house. It is a naturally strong placement but we disagree.
We change his ascendant from 28 Pisces to 06 Pisces making his Jupiter right on the tenth house cusp of dreams and aspirations. It also moves the preponderance from the sixth house of work and health to the seventh house of opportunities and partnerships but in Virgo, thus accentuating his solitariness in the mix.
This also moves his Mars into the fifth house of Leo and puts Pluto there as well. They are conjunct giving him strong impetus towards acting and the theater, both ruled by Leo that is trine his strong Jupiter partile his midheaven.
It’s not all roses though. The Mars in the fifth does suggest the loss of a son as well as a divorce. His ascendant opposite his Venus suggests vanity. The preponderance in the seventh tempers his great success as always being “paired,” but overall it’s a strong magnetic chart.
Our rectification makes him a Splash temperament type with a grand trine out of quadrature — instead of Scorpio for Jupiter it’s in fiery Sagittarius. Nonetheless Redford has few conjunctions and that just in Virgo. At the top of the chart Jupiter dominates and is trine Saturn in the first, suggesting he gravitates towards physically demanding roles that are typically out of doors. It also shows that he chose his roles to be of a “piece,” they fit into his overall personal theme and purpose and with no air in his chart, he likes characters like himself go with their gut instinct.
Uranus in the second house demonstrates his skill behind the camera as director and his use of electronics to deliver his message. With most of his planets under cover in the north, Redford lets few in, the rest of us see what he wants.
Of course you may disagree, and like the green chart better. Drop a line and tell us why.
