He wears a gray T-shirt, jeans, and brown- and-beige lace-up Merrells.

His full head of strawberry-blond hair is tousled, his smile luminescent.

His features have softened with age his skin has weathered but Robert Redford’s magnetism still electrifies.

Redford will turn 75 this year.

“Thanks for that reminder!”

he sarcastically responds when I mention the milestone.

No, he’s not planning a party.

I wrote her back and said, ' When I turned 40, I went into hiding!'

We’re very different in how we celebrate ourselves."

Which isn’t to say that Redford isn’t thriving.

“When you get older, you learn certainlife lessons.

So let’s go.'

We sit at a small round table in a classroom at Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

“Mind if I steal an egg from your salad?”

he asks, as if we’re old pals.

He smiles at my surprise, then settles in: “What can I tell you?”

Since costarring inThe Way We Werein 1973, the two had never been interviewed together.

I just was never interested in talking about myself,” Redford says.

“However, we’re in such a different time, and celebrity is so much in the mainstream.

“That really bothers me,” he says.

“Does that mean I’m bronzed?

It’s not over yet, folks!”

My focus is on the emotional arc of the characters.

Redford insists that his first objective as an actor and filmmaker is to entertain.

Yet his works have compelled audiences, sometimes uncomfortably, to examine the American experience personally andpolitically.

The stories he tells have roots in his own experience.

One of his earliest memories is from third grade, at the end of World War II.

“This dark current started running through our school about Jews,” Redford recalls.

“I didn’t know what a Jew was.

But suddenly people were whispering about who was a Jew and who wasn’t.

I am a Jew, and I’m very proud of it.'

The class gasped.”

That night at dinner, Redford told his father about Lois and asked: “What am I?

If she’s a Jew, what am I?”

“You’re a Jew and be proud of it,” Redford Sr. said.

The boy ran to his room, bawling.

“I thought, ‘I’m screwed,’ " Redford laughs.

“I heard my mom say, ‘Charlie, go explain.’

My dad came in and gave me a lecture about how what happened was unfair.

He said, ‘We’re all alike.’

"

It was an early turning point.

A natural athlete, he often captained his school football and baseball squads.

“The look on the face of the kid who was uncoordinated broke my heart,” he says.

“I would choose him. "

He was empathetic but also driven, sometimes to a fault.

“Then I’d get angry when he couldn’t perform,” he ruefully admits.