Early in Robert Redford’s career, he had no space to be picky about his projects. After taking a life-saving but small role in a play, he landed a summer theater part. He acted alongside a future Oscar-winner. Both actors went on to have successful careers. Redford said they spent much of their time commiserating over how terrible they found the project.

Robert Redford bonded with a co-star over the quality of a project

In 1959, Redford was a struggling actor in New York. After finally landing a role that paid him, he had further luck when he got the part in a summer stock theater in Connecticut. He was coming off a Broadway production and, even though he’d only had a small part, he found the Connecticut show to be lacking in quality.

“They didn’t have a costume for me, so they tore up an old sheet to make a toga,” he told Rolling Stone in 1980. “My hair was too straight, so they curled it.”

He acted alongside Louise Fletcher, who would later win an Oscar for her performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Redford said they both disliked the play and survived the experience by trashing it.

“Louise Fletcher played Helen of Troy, and we survived by commiserating with each other about what a load of s*** it seemed to be,” he said.

The play was Tiger at the Gate, a retelling of the Trojan War. Redford played Paris to Fletcher’s Helen of Troy.

Before this project, Robert Redford landed a life-changing role

Just months before this, Redford landed a part in Tall Story on Broadway. It was his first-ever role.

“I had one line. Actually, it was a life-saving deal,” he said. “My wife was supporting us on fifty-five dollars a week, working in a bank down on Wall Street. But she was pregnant, and — talk about sexism — the bank had a four-month cutoff point for pregnant women, and she had about two more weeks to go. And we had nothing in savings.”

He said he was “desperate” for the part, as he’d been auditioning without any luck. Things didn’t look promising when he got to the theater, so he decided he needed to stand out.

“Inside the theater, the director, producer, and writer all looked bored and impatient, standing there saying nothing but ‘next,’ ‘next.’ I went in, grabbed a basketball and just went crazy onstage. I was dribbling and hook-shooting off the wall and doing setups while I babbled some incoherent high-school chant I remembered, just jiving and generally doing a gorilla number onstage. The director finally put up his hands and said, ‘All right, fine, hire him, as long as he’ll get off the stage.’”

Redford would later appear in the film adaptation of Tall Story in the same role.

He didn’t initially plan to work as an actor

Though Redford became a major movie star, this wasn’t his initial goal. He thought he would be some kind of painter.

“I actually had come back from studying painting in Europe, and I wanted some practical experience to get a job, whether it was painting a car or the set or the side of a building,” he said. “I was at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and ended up studying set design at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. That quickly evaporated in favor of actually performing.”

He said he didn’t like studying acting, but felt grateful that he spent a year learning the basics.