Esquire: Robert Redford 'Unbedazzled' by Santa Monica

Residents fed up with gridlock and development have a celebrity ally in Robert Redford.

The Santa Monica-born actor who was launched into overnight celebrity stardom when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was released in 1969, said in a recent interview with Esquire magazine that he gets "itchy" in this city. Though his office, Wildwood Enterprises is located here, he says he comes to Santa Monica "as little" as possible.

"I'm never here more than two, three days at a crack. I get itchy—traffic, freeways, out-of-control development," he said in the magazine's April 2013 cover interview. "There was never a land-use plan. This was a beautiful city once, and it isn't anymore."

Santa Monica does have a land use plan, it's called the Land Use and Circulation Element, and it was adopted in the summer of 2010, and city officials are in the midst of adopting new planning guides specifically for the Bergamot Station Arts Center area and downtown.

Since the plan was adopted, however, there have been a record number of development requests, mostly to build mixed-use residential and commercial projects in downtown, along Lincoln Boulevard and near the future Expo Light Rail line.

Redford's disdain for congestion probably comes as no surprise to anyone who knows his story. He has traded the typical Hollywood lifestyle for a ranch in Utah, where he tells Esquire he gets lost riding horses for several hours a day.

Esquire calls him "just a working actor unbedazzled by his hometown." 

To read the full interview with Redford, "Free at Last: The Robert Redford Story," click over to esquire.com.