Robert Redford and his wife Sibylle Szaggars have a lot in common.
Both artists, on their own, met at Redford’s Sundance Mountain Resort, which the duo founded in 1968 with the Sundance Film Festival in the late ’90s. The legendary actress and multimedia artist got married in 2009 and have been together ever since.
Redford and Szaggars are also environmental activists and have spent much of their relationship working side by side to protect the environment and advocating environmental change through the nonprofit Szaggars, for which Redford served as vice president.
The couple are deeply private when it comes to their personal lives, and Redford rarely discusses their relationship in public. However, in his 2011 cover story AARP JournalHe said Szaggars, who is 20 years his junior, was a “very special person” and gave him “a whole new life”.
What else is there to know about Robert Redford’s wife? Read on to learn more about Sibylle Szaggars.
He is a multimedia artist
Szaggars is a visual artist who has channeled his passion for the environment into mediums such as oil painting, photography and performance art for over four decades, according to his website. His work has been exhibited around the world, including in Europe, Monaco, Peru, Singapore, Japan and the United States.
Her love for art began with her paintings and sketches inspired by her travels with her family as a young girl. She admired the indigenous cultures and ancient lands she observed and felt inclined to immortalize them in art.
In the mid-90s, he painted a Buffalo series depicting environmental threats to American Buffalo’s well-being.
“I used the American Buffalo as a symbol for vanishing life,” he said. Big Life Magazine.
“From the beginning of my career as an artist, nature has been the force that inspired me to become an activist through my art, warning of impending extinction dangers, but also signaling with colors and beauty how incredible this world is.” she continued.
He is from Germany
Szaggars was born on April 14, 1957 in Hamburg, Germany. He moved to London in the 1980s and started his career as an artist.
Redford also spent some formative years in Europe. Before starting his acting career, Redford wanted to be an artist and spent 18 months in Paris, painting and even sketching in chalk for tips on the sidewalks. AARP Journal.
In the late 1980s, the Szaggars moved to the USA and explored different picturesque states full of natural wonders throughout the Southwest and Utah. Big Life Magazinewhere he would later meet and eventually settle down with Redford.
Redford and Szaggars have spent most of their lives on the eco-friendly “Horse Whisper” farm in Utah, which he owned for years and sold in 2021. He also has homes in New Mexico and California.
She didn’t know much about Redford when she met him.
Redford had divorced his first wife, Lola Van Wagenen, when he met the Szaggars at Sundance Mountain Resort in 1996. Redford had come to ski and didn’t know much about the player.
At a panel held for the YoungArts Hall in 2014, Szaggers revealed that Redford invited him and a group of friends over for dinner and thought, “Oh my God, I don’t know any of his movies.”
He rented all his movies and says he watched each of them for 15 minutes two nights before dinner, in case he would open them, but he didn’t.
Redford said that not knowing much about herself actually drew him to her.
“It was a great start to a relationship, because instead of being colored by success, it started with two people meeting each other and forming a connection as two people,” Redford said.
He and Redford have been married since 2009.
Redford and Szaggars were married in a small, private ceremony in July 2009 at the luxurious Louis C. Jacob Hotel in their hometown of Hamburg, Germany.
The couple showed their creativity in their wedding style choices. According to local reports, Redford wore a white suit for the occasion, while Szaggars wore a champagne-colored suit.
Dedicated to protecting the environment
Szaggars’ passion for environmentalism began when he was young; He spent a lot of time traveling with his family and learning about indigenous cultures and ancient lands.
“I learned that all these people have one thing in common. They respect nature and the environment they live in, and they celebrate Earth in their ceremonial acts,” he said. Big Life Magazine. “I was very aware that western or ‘modern’ cultures were far from paying attention to all this.”
Environmentalism is also a major cause for Redford. In the 2020 PEOPLE feature film, the actor talked about how an early trip to Utah with his mother ignited his love of the natural world and his desire to protect it.
“Since then, I’ve spent decades joining scientists and activists trying to do everything we can to raise red flags about the catastrophic climate change for which we are responsible,” he said.
Founded a non-profit company
In 2015, Szaggars founded The Way of the Rain, a nonprofit dedicated to “developing, producing, and performing educational and artistic performances – designed and themed to promote public awareness in support of the preservation of our Earth.”
The nonprofit is named after a performance art piece of the same name that Szaggars released in 2013, and Redford serves as its vice president.
She is stepmother to Redford’s children
While Redford and Szaggars do not have children together, she is the stepmother of Redford’s children from a previous marriage.
Redford and Van Wagenen had two daughters together: Shauna Jean, born in 1960, and Amy Hart, born in 1970.
They also had two sons: Scott Anthony, who died of SIDS just two months after his birth in 1959, and James, who died of liver cancer in October 2020 at the age of 58.
James, like his father, was an activist and filmmaker. In 2005, James and Redford founded The Redford Center, a nonprofit dedicated to producing environmental impact films.