Which movie was Robert Redford’s first film as a director?

Robert Redford (born 1936) is an accomplished American actor, producer and director who has received multiple awards and accolades over the course of his film industry career. In 2014, ‘Time’ magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In 1980, Redford began his career as a director with the film ‘Ordinary People’ which was one of the most critically acclaimed films of the decade winning four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor and the Academy Award for Best Director. The ‘New York Times’ said the movie was “a moving, intelligent and funny film about disasters that are commonplace to everyone except the people who experience them.”

Of note, the American actor Timothy Hutton (born 1960) was the recipient for Best Supporting Actor, the youngest recipient at age 20.

The film was a psychological drama based on the 1976 novel of the same name by the American novelist and screen writer, Judith Guest (born 1936).

The film unfolds over 124 minutes following the disintegration of an upper-middle class family in Lake Forest, Illinois, post the accidental death of one of their two sons and the attempted suicide of the other.

The budget to produce the film was $6.2 million and it grossed $90 million worldwide.