Legend Status For 'Sundance Kid'

Since his sensational debut as a leading man in "Barefoot in the Park" in 1967, Robert Redford has made an indelible mark on the silver screen in many roles, not all of them on camera. Now, he's achieved living legend status as a 2005 recipient of the Kennedy Center Awards.

Redford spoke to co-anchor Julie Chen in Washington, D.C., recently as part of a series of interviews for The Early Show with award recipients.

As an actor, Redford had the impossible good looks that make a matinee idol, but from the start he was skittish about fame. The only kind of success in movies, he says, is "huge, highly-exposed success." And early on, the actor saw three dangers in that.

"The danger would be (that) you'd be treated like an object," he said. "The second danger point, if you didn't watch it, was that you would begin to behave like an object. And then the third and final one was that you would become an object."

Instead, Redford became a director and producer while continuing to take on roles as a leading man. He's also championed independent film as founder of the Sundance Institute and the showman behind its annual film festival.

His stubborn independence from Hollywood made him impossible to objectify, and looking back he sees that as his best achievement, "that I was able to be in a very tough business where it's hard to maintain your own independence, and sort of do it the way I wanted to for as long as I have. That's probably the best of it for me."

The Kennedy Center Award has the ring of a lifetime achievement award, but Redford is hardly retired. He currently co-stars with Jennifer Lopez and Morgan Freeman in the drama "An Unfinished Life," and continues to develop new film projects in his producer role, such as "The Motorcycle Diaries."

But whatever he does, there's one question that inevitably follows him: Will he and Paul Newman ever again team up after their immensely popular movies, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" in 1969, and "The Sting" in 1973? Decades later, such an event appears more likely than ever. "If," he says, "we're not both in wheelchairs by the time ..."

Meanwhile, you can see Redford next on a special CBS broadcast of the Kennedy Center Honors on Tuesday, Dec. 27, at 9 PM ET/ 8 PM CT.

(For additional video from Robert Redford's interview for The Early Show, click at right.)