Robert Redford feted by Film Society of Lincoln Center

Los Angeles: Oscar-winning director Robert Redford became the 42nd recipient of Film Society of Lincoln Center's Chaplin award for lifetime achievement.

The 78-year-old actor-director, whose big screen career spans more than 50 years, was celebrated by several colleagues and friends including his "The Way We Were" co-star Barbra Streisand.

She handed him his award, said the Hollywood Reporter. Ann Tenenbaum, chairman of the board of Film Society of Lincoln Center Chaplin (FSLC), described the honouree as "an icon a great actor, a great director and, bar-none, the champion of independent filmmaking of our time". 

"The world of cinema will forever be indebted to Robert Redford and the Sundance Institute," the independent filmmaking lab named after the character that Redford portrays in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid that the actor established in 1981 on land in Utah that he purchased in the early sixties.

The location subsequently became the site of the annual Sundance Film Festival. Redford's three-time costar Jane Fonda they collaborated on "The Chase" (1966), "Barefoot in the Park" (1967) and "The Electric Horseman" (1979) said they first met in 1963, when they were both young up-and-comers on Broadway.

"I was in love with him for every movie we did together," she said, noting that she was drawn not only to his looks but to his outlook about the world and to his abilities as an actor.

"I don't think there's any other actor who's had a bigger influence on American cinema," she said.