This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Some movie stars are so consistently good for so long that we allow ourselves to forget how great they are.

Robert Redford is one of those stars. In fact, he may be the last true movie star who's still out there, knocking out performances without falling into old habits (like Al Pacino) or becoming a recluse (like Warren Beatty).

Redford turns 80 this month — on Thursday, Aug. 18, actually — and he's not sitting around. He co-stars in the Disney remake "Pete's Dragon" (released nationwide Friday), has another movie in the can ("The Discovery," a sci-fi drama starring Jason Segel and Rooney Mara) for next year and has plans to act in a couple more.

For Redford's birthday, The Cricket has scanned through his six decades as an actor, producer and director to compile a list of 20 essential Robert Redford movies. Enjoy.

1. "The Twilight Zone: Nothing in the Dark" (1962)

Redford paid the bills as a young actor with TV gigs. His best may be an episode of "The Twilight Zone," as an injured cop calling out to a lonely woman (Gladys Cooper) who won't open her door for fear of letting in Death.

2. "Barefoot in the Park" (1967)

As a young actor on Broadway, Redford's biggest role was in Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park," so it was natural he would co-star in the film. The role defined one of his early screen personas — the uptight urbanite — and brilliantly paired him with young Jane Fonda. (The two reunited for "The Electric Horseman" in 1979 and are set to film the upcoming Netflix drama "Our Souls at Night.")

3. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969)

Important for so many reasons: establishing Redford as a star and a Western icon, indelibly pairing him with Paul Newman and providing the name for Redford's ski resort, nonprofit arts organization, film festival, catalog store, TV channel and so on.

4. "Downhill Racer" (1969)

Redford took on the American ideal of winning with this verite drama about an Olympic skier who sacrifices relationships in his pursuit of excellence. It was his first stab at producing, and his frustration with the studio inspired the founding of the Sundance Institute.

5. "The Candidate" (1972)

The second of Redford's "winning" films (both directed by Michael Ritchie), this time as an unproven Senate candidate whose ideals slip as he rises in the polls. The final line — "What do we do now?" — still resonates.

6. "Jeremiah Johnson" (1972)

This Western drama, with Redford as a mountain man in conflict with Indian warriors, is one of the most intense movies of his career. Mostly shot in Utah (including at his Sundance resort), it's the second of seven he made with director Sydney Pollack, his longtime friend.

7. "The Way We Were" (1973)

Redford and Pollack reteamed here, but the key pairing was the onscreen romance between Redford's WASPy screenwriter and Barbra Streisand's Jewish political activist. For all the lovey-dovey moments (and that title song), it's also one of the better screen depictions of the McCarthy era.

8. "The Sting" (1973)

Redford and Newman again, this time as con artists taking on a ruthless tycoon (Robert Shaw) in '30s Chicago. It's a delight, propelled by a sumptuous period look and Marvin Hamlisch's adaptation of Scott Joplin's ragtime classics. Redford snagged his only acting Oscar nomination here; it's one of three Best Picture winners with which he is associated.

9. "Three Days of the Condor" (1975)

Redford plays a CIA analyst who must use his wits when his own agency aims to kill him. One of the best paranoid thrillers of the '70s and a movie whose influence can be seen in modern spy films (e.g., "The Bourne Identity").

10. "All the President's Men" (1976)

Another of the best paranoid thrillers, but this one is real: Redford and Dustin Hoffman teamed as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story that toppled the Nixon administration. (Fun fact: When Woodward and Bernstein were preparing to write a book on their reporting, it was Redford who suggested they write themselves in as the central characters.)

11. "Ordinary People" (1980)

Redford went deliberately small with his directing debut, a quietly intense story (adapted from Judith Guest's novel) about a family strained to the breaking point when the older son dies. The drama won Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Supporting Actor (for Timothy Hutton) and also boasted powerful performances by Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland and Judd Hirsch.

12. "The Natural" (1984)

Redford made fewer movies in the '80s than in the '70s, as he concentrated on directing and on getting the Sundance Institute on its feet. Still, he starred in one of the most iconic baseball movies ever as Roy Hobbs, the phenom struck by tragedy and scandal who tries years later to make it in the big leagues. Fans of Bernard Malamud's novel dislike the liberties director Barry Levinson took with the story, but the results onscreen are luminous.

13. "Out of Africa" (1985)

Redford gives great romantic support to Meryl Streep in this epic biography (directed by Pollack) of Danish author Karen Blixen, aka Isak Dinesen, in her personal awakening in colonial-era Africa.

14. "A River Runs Through It" (1992)

It took one Westerner to persuade another, author Norman Maclean, to allow Redford to direct the adaptation of Maclean's autobiographical novella about brothers separated by temperament but united by fly-fishing. The movie was a great early vehicle for Brad Pitt, and Philippe Rousselot's glowing cinematography won an Oscar. The most beautiful aspect may be Redford's unadorned narration, which allows Maclean's words to touch the heart unimpeded by artifice.

15. "Indecent Proposal" (1993)

The premise is ridiculous: A billionaire offers a struggling couple $1 million if he can sleep with the wife. But with Redford as the billionaire, Demi Moore as the wife and Woody Harrelson as the husband, it plays out as a polished parable of greed and ambition.

16. "Quiz Show" (1994)

Redford's focus on winning took a cynical turn as he directed this precisely calibrated account of the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s, starting when a sharp contestant, Herb Stempel (John Turturro), is ushered aside for the more "all-American" — aka not Jewish — Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes).

17. "The Horse Whisperer" (1998)

Redford's love of the West shines through in this drama, in which he directed himself as a horse trainer helping an injured teen (Scarlett Johansson, then 13) and the horse who threw her. He cut the schmaltz (and a terrible finale) from Nicholas Evans' novel as he rendered a quietly heartbreaking romance between the trainer and the girl's mother (Kristin Scott Thomas).

18. "Lions for Lambs" (2007)

A senator (Tom Cruise) tells a D.C. reporter (Meryl Streep) about a secret military mission in Afghanistan, while soldiers (including Michael Peña and Derek Luke) carry out that mission, and a professor (Redford, who directed) counsels an apathetic student (Andrew Garfield) about politics, war and service. Dismissed at the time as overly talky, it's worth a second look as a parable about brave troops and the politicians who callously use them as pawns.

19. "All Is Lost" (2013)

An indie director takes Redford up on his challenge to cast him in a movie, and it's a beaut: J.C. Chandor's solitary drama casts Redford as a lone sailor trying to survive in the Indian Ocean when his sailboat is damaged. Redford gives his all in a performance that's nearly wordless and completely riveting.

20. "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" (2014)

What does a legendary actor do to shake things up? He plays a villain in a Marvel movie. As Secretary Alexander Pierce, Nick Fury's boss and secret Hydra mole, Redford exudes cool political calculation at every step. It works because, let's face it, the last human being you would expect to say "Hail Hydra" is Robert Freaking Redford.

Sean P. Means writes The Cricket in daily blog form at www.sltrib.com/blogs/moviecricket. Follow him on Twitter @moviecricket. Email him at spmeans@sltrib.com.