I am not particularly an emotional person, outwardly anyway. I am English after all — I must have a couple of stiff-upper-lipped genes buried inside me somewhere. So generally I don’t tend to get too affected when people I do not know personally pass away.

But I have to admit to a sad twinge with the news that Robert Redford died yesterday. I have no connection to the man; I’ve never seen him in the flesh even from a distance. My knowledge of him has come entirely filtered through a cinema and television screen. But his films seem to have been a constant in my life — and this has been a wonderful thing.

I am no different from many of my age. My love for film started with the blockbusters of the 70’s and early 80’s: Star Wars, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark were my foundational films. But it was the Hollywood films of the 70’s that sucked me into becoming a life long movie addict. This really was one of the great eras for the film industry. Intelligent scripts combined with great acting and directing talent to produce some truly memorable films. And All the President’s Men in particular is a film I have revisited many times over the years. It really is a model film: exciting, thoughtful and of course angry. It was a film that could entertain and outrage at the same time. And I love it when movies can provoke these emotions simultaneously. Activate the head and the heart.

And of course Redford and Hoffman are sublime.

My secondary school English teacher — the wonderful Mr Doherty had cottoned on to my love for film at an early age — and he had given me his copy of Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman. This is of course an essential text for all would-be-screenwriters. Remember, nobody knows anything! And so Butch Cassidy and All the President’s Men were two of the first films I watched and rewatched with a bit of knowledge about their production process. Remember this was all pre-internet and possibly even before home video (I can’t quite remember). I felt like I was becoming a real film scholar — rather than just staying up late watching movies on a school night — which is probably how my parents saw it!

Redford became a background influence again when I went to university. The Chase was one of the films we studied as part of our 1960’s Hollywood course. But perhaps more importantly the early 90’s was a genuinely great time for independent cinema. These great small budget films seem to explode onto the screen from nowhere. And his work at Sundance gave birth to so many films that remain dear to me (and quite a few others I’m sure) — Sex, Lies & Videotape, Reservoir Dogs, Blood Simple, Heathers, Clerks, El Mariachi, Hoop Dreams — I could go on and on with the number of films Sundance had a hand in creating and were essential to this aspiring writer/director in the early 90’s.

And all these films are great because they start with a fantastic screenplay.

And so Redford was there in the shaping of my own personal movie tastes.

And he has remain there right throughout my life. And I need to also mention All is Lost — a film made when he was 76. That statement alone is inspiring. The film has such a wonderful virtually dialogue-free script from JC Chandor, and it works so well because of Redford’s life-long earned screen persona. I thought All is Lost was so good that I saw it twice at the cinema on consecutive days. I haven’t done that for many films in my life.

Happy #WW.