Redford says 'I'm getting tired of acting'

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Robert Redford says he will stop acting soon, and will shift back to directing after two current projects are completed.

Redford dropped this bombshell in an interview with his grandson, Dylan, published on the blog of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis — where the 80-year-old actor/director/producer is to appear at a retrospective Saturday.

"I'm getting tired of acting," Redford told his grandson. "I'm an impatient person, so it's hard for me to sit around and do take after take after take. … So, I'm thinking of moving in that direction and not acting so much."

Redford has roles in two projects now in the pipeline: A romance, "Our Souls at Night," with Jane Fonda, recently filmed in Colorado and slated to debut on Netflix; and "The Old Man and the Gun," a true-life heist drama directed by David Lowery (who worked with Redford on "Pete's Dragon").

"Once they're done then I'm going to say, 'OK, that's goodbye to all that,' and then just focus on directing," Redford said.

Redford — who lives part-time at his Sundance resort in Provo Canyon, and founded the Sundance Institute — also expressed a desire to return to painting, which he intended to be his career as a young man, before his acting career took off.

"At this point in my life, age 80, it'd give me more satisfaction because I'm not dependent on anybody," Redford said. "It's just me, just the way it used to be, and so going back to sketching. That's sort of where my head is right now."