Inside Robert Redford's Family Tragedies: What He Said About the Deaths of His Two Sons

The late actor's sons, Scott and James, whom he shared with ex-wife Lola Van Wagenen, predeceased him.

NEED TO KNOW

• Robert Redford, who died at 89 on Tuesday, September 16, was a father to four children, whom he shared with his first wife, Lola Van Wagenen.
• Redford's two sons, Scott and James, preceded him in death; Scott died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at 2½ months old in 1959, while James died of cancer at 58 in 2020.
• "Something like that doesn't get completely dismissed. It probably shows up in various small ways you're not even aware of," Redford said about Scott's death in 2017.

Robert Redford , who died On Tuesday, Sept. 16, at 89 years old, he was a father to four children in his lifetime. Two of his children - sons Scott and James - died before the celebrated actor and filmmaker, in 1959 and 2020, respectively.

Redford and his first wife, Lola Van Wagenen, welcomed four children together: Scott, Shauna, James and Amy Redford. The former couple's firstborn, Scott, died from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at 2 ½ months old. James, who was the third eldest, died of cancer in October 2020. (Robert divorced Van Wagenen in 1985. Decades later, in 2009, he married again with Sibylle Szaggars after their first meeting in 1996, when the actor invited her and a group of friends to dinner at his Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah.

Robert rarely spoke about Scott, who was born on Sept. 1, 1959 and unexpectedly died of SIDS on Nov. 19. In 2017, though, the All the President's Men Star spoke out about Scott's death in an interview with Esquire United Kingdom .

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"I was only 21; my wife was 20. We were just starting our lives; I was just starting my career in New York. Of course it was traumatic, and how that plays out over time, I don't know," Robert said at the time. "We had to deal with it. You have to move on. And we had other children who came. But something like that doesn't get completely dismissed. It probably shows up in various small ways you're not even aware of."

"I'm sure there's a lot of this stuff that's subconscious. But it's pretty traumatic when it happens, particularly when you're that young. You're not equipped to deal with it," he added. When Esquire asked if he ever spent time in therapy to unpack the loss, Robert said, "Sure I did. But it never worked out. I tried a while back, two or three times. I found myself trying to psychoanalyze the analyst."

James, meanwhile, was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a disease that affects the liver and bile ducts, as an adult. He received two liver transplants in 1993 and founded a nonprofit called the James Redford Institute for Transplant Awareness following those surgeries. In 1999, James also released a documentary, The Kindness of Strangers , which followed organ donors and recipients.

James' wife, Kyle, announced His death at 58 in an X (previously known as Twitter) post on Oct. 16, 2020. At the time, she told The Salt Lake Tribune That James died from bile-duct cancer in his liver. Kyle said her husband's liver disease had returned in 2018, and that the cancer was discovered in November 2019 while he was awaiting a liver transplant.

Following James' death, a representative for the actor told newsrealtimethat Robert was "mourning with his family during this difficult time and asks for privacy." The representative added, " The grief is immeasurable with the loss of a child Jamie was a loving son, husband and father. His legacy lives on through his children, art, filmmaking and devoted passion to conservation and the environment.

Robert himself spoke about the importance of parenting in his life when he talked with newsrealtimefor a 1998 cover story .

Newsrealtime, think it's been easy for me. That's hard to live with. It's so untrue. The hardest thing in the world is when your children have problems," he said at the time. "There have been so many hits on our family that no one knows about, and I don't want them to, for my family's sake. I've made some interesting movies, and I've been very satisfied with the work, but if someone wrapped it all up and said to me, 'What's your greatest achievement?' I'd say, 'The children. They're the best thing in my life.'

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