Redford relishes 'Unfinished' role

Robert Redford has had to postpone his morning interview, and when he does check in with apologies, he reports the reason with some wariness.

"I had to do some business with corporate America," he says. "My least favorite thing."

Corporate politics have also affected Redford's new film, "An Unfinished Life." "An Unfinished Life," to Redford's "enormous frustration," has been on the shelf for more than two years while Miramax, the distributor, attempted to come to some sort of understanding or reconciliation with its corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co.

When it did, it designed an agreement that allowed Miramax to shepherd its remaining films to market, but as Redford observes, it's shepherding some films with more guidance than others.

"It could make me crazy if I let it," Redford says.

"An Unfinished Life" is easily Redford's best film since 1998's "The Horse Whisperer" and the first to see him truly accepting, if not altogether embracing, his 68 years. He plays an embittered Wyoming rancher who spends his days cutting brush and looking after his former horse wrangler and best friend, played by Morgan Freeman, now an invalid after being mauled by a bear.

But the rancher's life changes dramatically with the arrival of his dead son's former wife, Jennifer Lopez, and an 11 -year-old granddaughter he never knew he had. He had finally begun to live with his son's accidental death. But seeing Lopez, hiding out from an abusive boyfriend, and whom he blames for the tragedy, opens old wounds.

"God, it was great to play a guy like him, gone to seed, surly. I put on weight, didn't have to shave or get groomed every morning, didn't have to smile for the camera. Plus, I had never played that guy before, but I knew him intimately. You live in the West long enough, you meet those guys everywhere. Times have changed, and they don't like it a bit. Some go with the flow, some don't, and this guy doesn't."

"An Unfinished Life" was adapted from a novel by Mark Spragg and since, unlike most of his films in the past 25 years, it was not developed by Redford's Wildwood production company, he enjoyed the relative freedom of being an actor for hire.

"Oh, Lasse and I did a little bit of work on the script," he says of director Lasse Hallstrom, who specializes in novel-to-film adaptations like "The Cider House Rules" and "Chocolat ."