You always think you know everything about stars. Many tributes were paid to Robert Redford, the giant of American cinema, following the news of his death. On this occasion, some of the commentators discovered that the great American actor had spent some time in Paris in his early years, learning the "beaux-arts". Robert Redford, a French alumni?

We always think we know everything, but did we know, for example, that Robert Redford, the "sacred watch of cinema", was originally destined for another kind of artistic career? In a recent biography of the actor translated into French, the author, who met the actor frequently to write his book, attempts to reveal "the complex and surprising man beneath the Hollywood facade", focusing on his "French period".

This "friend of France", in the words of the tribute issued by the French Minister of Culture, is said to have "found inspiration during his time at the Beaux-Arts in Paris". Born in 1936, Robert Redford had grown up in an America where he didn't fit in. And, in the 1950s, it was in Paris that he "believed he found his calling: painting".

Returning to the artist's biography, published in French in 2022, we discover that this "restless youth" did indeed pass through Paris. According to the biographer, "it was the world of his dreams: subversive, restless, extreme". For, according to Robert Redford himself: " My discovery of pre-Gaullist France marked for me the beginning of a coherent political conscience".

On the bangs (or, on the contrary, at the center?) of this "coherent political consciousness", the actor chose to cultivate art in the broadest sense, and enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-arts de Paris. But the school, explains his biographer, had recently "put architecture first, ahead of painting and sculpture", with the first two years of study "focused on classicism and the Renaissance". Robert Redford expresses a certain disappointment: " This was the school where Delacroix, Ingres, Renoir, Degas and Monet had been trained. It was supposed to be the school par excellence where experimentation was valued. But the atmosphere I discovered was very academic and very serious.

He continues: " I spent my days sitting in a courtyard learning Alberti's mathematical theories, or the principles of aerial perspective and chiaroscuro ". In short, after a few weeks, he was "transferred to the modernist Académie Charpentier, which had just been accredited".

It was here that Redford discovered the visual art he loved. The Académie de la Grande Chaumière, which has now succeeded the Académie Charpentier, pays tribute to Robert Redford in turn, attesting that this "legendary actor and talented director" was also "a pupil of the Académie during his stay in Paris in the 1950s", a time when Paris was already "a crossroads for artists from all over the world".

Robert Redford then "immersed himself in the city's artistic effervescence", where he "rubbed shoulders with painters, sculptors and writers", encounters that nurtured "his artistic vision and personal research". Specifically, he studied painting and drawing at the Académie Charpentier, where he discovered a new world: " I was able to forget about academic studies and experiment. It was the first time in my life that I could work in natural freedom, try things out and fail or succeed"...

We all know what Robert Redford's career has been like as an actor, director and filmmaker... We all know the extent to which the 70 great roles he has played have left their mark on world cinema, we all know about his great successes, his Oscars and his numerous international awards. What is less well known is that, at the end of his life, Robert Redford returned to his first love and finally agreed to exhibit his early works. In Monaco in 2011, a charity exhibition showcased the work of artists who had indulged their "hidden passion for the visual arts". Robert Redford's youthful works were unveiled for the first time, and reproductions of five of the actor-director's sketches - four female nudes and one male portrait - "created during his bohemian years, dating back to his early years as a student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris" were on display. The story had come full circle.

• Robert Redford biography (éditions La Trace), with extracts available
• Press release from the French Ministry of Culture