Robert Redford, who died Tuesday at age 89, has always been one of my favorite movie stars for reasons that went beyond his blonde, blindlingly handsome visage and golden boy cool. For my money, the art and craft of American film making and movies, even crowd-pleasing, big studio productions, reached their creative and storytelling zenith in that decade. Redford is among a core group of actors and actresses who defined that era for me.

I admire his body of work in the ’70s the most. Yes, I know his breakthrough vehicle, the anti-hero Western, “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid,” with veteran superstar Paul Newman, was released in 1969, and 1984’s “The Natural” was a nostalgic, gorgeous surprise — especially for an avid baseball fan who views the game as a font of literature, history, and poetry, as I do. And as an award-winning director of remarkable films (the extraordinary, harrowing “Ordinary People”; “Quiz Show,” “A River Runs Though It,” “The Milagro Beanfield War,” “The Horse Whisperer”), Redford certainly continued to do compelling, vital work throughout the 1980s and ’90s. But still, it’s his image-defining seventies run that does it for me.

He could have coasted as the A-List movie star he was once he got famous, but Redford was resolutely unwilling to do so (OK, maybe mostly resolutely; “Legal Eagles” or “Indecent Proposal” anyone?) As an actor, despite (or in spite of?) his matinee-idol looks, Redford searched for stories and roles of substance. There was something essential and intrinsic to his being that lent his characters a magnetic, down-to-earth humanity; a knowing, watchful intelligence that imbued them with a kind of innate self-possession that offset the undeniably bright wattage of that Redford grin.

In that regard, Redford seemed to be tapping into, and playing, some version himself (especially in the sublime proto-mockumentary political satire of 1972’s “The Candidate”). It was that alchemy of Hollywood movie star, serious actor, and the deeply ethical person we came to know, that made us want to watch.

Redford’s unswerving commitment across the personal and professional spectrum — to preserving our natural resources and protecting the environment; and fostering new independent film and theater talent through his Sundance Institute — are not only major components of his legacy, but certainly worth their own tribute outside his body of work as an actor and director. From the countless interviews, news stories, and most critically, the man’s actual good deeds I’ve read and heard about over the years, Redford, like his frequent co-star and old friend Paul Newman, was by all accounts a conscientious citizen and champion of the underdog, who believed in using his considerable star power and resources as a platform for good.

But in the interest of timeliness and meeting self-imposed deadlines — this tribute actually began as an intended quick riff on one of my favorite Redford films, 1975’s “Three Days of the Condor,” which I’m just getting around to mentioning now — I’ll stick to my original plan. Even though, as some of you know, I’ve rarely been accused of brevity. As one of Redford’s genuinely chilling films, along with “All The President’s Men,” “Condor” was, and remains, a suspenseful psychological study of espionage, danger, and political paranoia that, while succinctly capturing the mood of much of 1970s America, still resonates and reverberates today.

Expertly directed by Sydney Pollack, who often employed Redford as his protagonist-leading man muse — much like Martin Scorsese utilized Robert DeNiro in that decade, for me, “Condor” is one of the finest suspense thrillers of the decade. It stands strongly alongside Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation,” both Alan J. Pakula’s “The Parallax View” (starring Warren Beatty) and his “All The President’s Men” (with Redford and Dustin Hoffman), and John Schlesinger’s “Marathon Man” (again, Hoffman) as prime examples of the post-Watergate era’s climate of claustrophobic mistrust, suspicion, and surveillance. And this feeling of being watched, technologically tailed, and eavesdropped-upon occurred decades before social media and its algorithms permeated our lives, mind you.

If you haven’t ever gotten around to watching “Three Days of the Condor” (I’m always surprised by the number of folks who haven’t seen it, but there’s no time like the present), I highly recommend it as one of Redford’s best roles amid a stellar career that spanned six decades. He’s far from glamorously golden in this movie. In fact, precisely the opposite. His character, a CIA codebreaker named Joe Turner (code name “Condor”) is a man who is being hunted, and looks it. He’s frightened and freaked out, trying to find a measure of calm, if not a moment’s peace, amid a life that’s been turned violently, surreally, as upside down as the ransacked office and human carnage he encounters when he arrives back at work one morning.

The supporting cast — Faye Dunaway, Max Von Sydow, Cliff Robertson — is as taut and tremendous as you might surmise. Plus, it’s the 1970s, and so the tweed and corduroy clothes, and those very ’70s aviator glasses (his character is a bookish data reader, after all) look smashing on him. But then, I suppose, so would a pair of “Have A Happy Day” smiley face buttons if they were fastened to that fabulous face.