When the Oscar-winning filmmaker, actor, and activist Robert Redford passed away at his Sundance, UT home at the age of 89 this past September, many locals felt a personal loss. Because Redford wasn’t just a face on a screen—he was a celebrated actor and director that filmed not one but two feature films right here in our neck of the woods.

The Horse Whisperer, 1998

Redford, the boyishly handsome all-American icon, had matured by the time he directed the first film he also starred in: 1998’s The Horse Whisperer. In the movie, he plays Tom Booker, an elusive horse whisperer in Montana who heals a teen girl’s horse—and her family. Redford stars alongside a 15-year-old Scarlett Johansson, who plays Grace, and Kristen Scott Thomas, who plays Grace’s mother, Annie. 

The opening scene of The Horse Whisperer shows two girls riding horseback across a snow-covered field past a stable and line of fences. If it looks familiar, that’s because it is. Stepwise Farm on Fitch Road, now called Thirty Year Farm, was the setting.

Another farm that makes an appearance early in the movie is Winterwood Farm on Middle Line Road in Ballston Lake.

“Mr. Redford came up and looked around and asked if we could do some preliminary shots,” says Winterwood’s Barbara Sanford, remembering back to 1997. “He was a true environmentalist—so down to earth and funny. A real rider. He came in February and stayed to the end of April. He was as lovely as everyone has said.”

Sanford’s role in the filming was threefold: In addition to providing Winterwood as a filming location, she helped Hollywood horse trainer Rex Peterson with the equine star, Hightower, and other horses used in the movie, and even appears on screen as an assistant veterinarian at the accident scene filmed at a tunnel on Ushers Road in Halfmoon. The hospital Grace is brought to following the accident is actually the Roosevelt Bathhouse in the Spa State Park. Sanford’s daughter, Cailin, even served as a double for Johansson, who was the same age; in the scene where Grace is in bed after her amputation watching videos of herself riding in a horse show, she’s really watching Cailin’s own home video.

Locally shot scenes only make up the first 15 minutes of the movie, but after filming moved to Montana, Sanford was invited to visit the set. “I rode the mountains horseback with Robert, his girlfriend at the time, and head trainer Rex Peterson,” she says. “Rex and my family are great friends to this day. It was an amazing opportunity. We’re forever grateful to Bob Redford.” 

The Way We Were, 1973

But The Horse Whispererwasn’t Redford’s first time in the Capital Region: In 1973, he co-starred with Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were, a romance movie filmed in part in downtown Ballston Spa and at Union College in Schenectady.

In one romantic scene, Redford, who plays an Ivy League college student, drops to one knee in front of the Medbery Inn on Ballston Spa’s Front Street to tie the shoelaces of Streisand, who plays a Marxist anti-war activist that waits on Redford and his preppy friends at the café down the street. You can sense it’s not going to work out—and it doesn’t.

Years ago, former Ballston Spa Mayor John Romano shared his experience as a night watchman on the set in 1973 with writer Ann Hauprich, who joined other Ballston Spa residents to watch the filming from the Post Office steps. “During downtime on the set, we would congregate in a garage owned by The Medbery and bounce a ball in a cup to pass the time,” Romano told Hauprich. “I remember Robert Redford and Bradford Dillman watching the games. They struck me as being just a couple of regular guys.” Romano went on to say that Redford was always gracious, taking time to talk to everyone who approached him.”

New York State Senator James Tedisco, a 1972 graduate of Union College, was hired as a wardrobe manager for the movie alongside his basketball team co-captain, Bob Pezzano. “The pay was $50 a day,” Tedisco told Times Union reporter Paul Grondahl. “We felt rich.”

At Union, Redford would often toss a football or frisbee with student extras during breaks. “He was a wonderful guy—very friendly, and joked around with us,” Tedisco said. “It was the experience of a lifetime.”