Redford the radical

He doesn't, he claims, "believe in stepping out and making big statements in public", yet he has always seemed happy to take advantage of any platform offered to him.

That was certainly the case with All the President's Men, the 1975 film following the investigation and exposé by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of Richard Nixon's Watergate cover-up. Dustin Hoffman played Bernstein to Redford's Woodward, though the movie, he says, almost didn't happen because Woodward suspected a set-up.

"I called him and said, 'Hi, this is Bob Redford', and he muttered something about this not being a good time. When I finally did meet him, much later, in a secret place somewhere in Washington, he said, 'I didn't think it was you'. It was a very paranoid time.'"

But did he ask Woodward, back then, about the identity of his informant, Deep Throat? "He said, 'I can't tell you' and I said, 'I don't want to know'."

Even now that Deep Throat has broken cover, revealing himself as retired FBI man W Mark Felt, Redford refuses to get sidetracked. What interests him, he says, is not who Deep Throat was but the fact that the kind of conspiracy they dealt with in All the President's Men is still going on.

I've begun to notice similar patterns begin to repeat themselves," Redford says. "It's interesting that this man's name has come out, but what is more interesting is the dangerous-similarity with what is going on now in Washington with the press.

"When I began to be political in the US in the late Sixties and early Sevenies, it was to do with the environment, particularly the American West. I still speak out whenever I can, because there is no one worse than President Bush on the environment."

Never satisfied to remain a mere actor, Redford has become as influential behind the camera as he is in front of it. He earned credibility as a director with the Oscar-winning Ordinary People (1980) and acclaimed Quiz Show (1994), and was executive producer on last year's political hit, The Motorcycle Diaries, about Che Guevara. He has been committed, since the Eighties, to promoting independent and young film-makers, through his Sundance Institute and film festival.

His most recent outing on the side of the good guys has been a partnership with eBay founder and billionaire philanthropist Jeffrey Skoll on a series for American public television (PBS) called The New Heroes.

The subject matter - people who have risked their lives to bring about social change - is all good liberal stuff. But Redford's defence of PBS turns out to be rather more radical. "I want to underline the word 'public'," he says, "because there are moves to destroy PBS by the new conservative elements that have taken control of the media in the United States, and that is very dangerous.

"Change is not going to come from the top: it's got to come from the bottom. But," he adds, aware that he is beginning to thump a tub, "that's not really what I do. The main thing I do is direct, act in and produce movies."

His next film role is in Lasse Hallstrom's An Unfinished Life, a family drama that has just finished shooting in which he rebuilds his relationship with his estranged daughter-in-law (played by Jennifer Lopez, who could do with a little career-rebuilding herself). He will direct and star in his next feature, Aloft, an ecological adventure about a migrating peregrine falcon.

There is also talk of him playing a baseball coach in a biopic of baseball legend Jackie Robinson. But is there any truth in the rumour of his screen reunion with Paul Newman, his old buddy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? He'd certainly "like to", but that's all he'll admit to, though he says it with a flashing smile. Read into that what you will.