good parents

Sometimes you even find them in Hollywood—or, rather, connected to Hollywood.

Amy Redford, daughter of onetime hunk and superstar Robert Redford (seen here with my other youthful heart-throb Paul Newman),

sounds like a very down-to-earth young woman.

“My sister and I were talking recently about how [Redford] validated how our minds work and listened to us as kids. I am able to talk to my dad in a way a lot of people can’t — he still drives me nuts, he’s still my dad, but I have to say, in light of what his universe was, he had his eye on the ball in terms of having kids, and part of that was being raised in Manhattan.”

What about the girlfriends who said, “Oh, God, your dad is so cute”?

“I didn’t have those kinds of girlfriends,” Ms. Redford says. “I was at the same school since I was 2, and my dad was just ‘Amy’s dad.’ It was just part of the territory.”

Ms. Redford is a filmmaker. She’s profiled in the NYT’s Home section on the occasion of the release of her film The Guitar. She lives in the West Village, in a one-bedroom apartment she bought in 1996:

The money came from a gift her parents gave each of their three children at 21.

“It was starting-out money,” she says, “and meant to ease the pain, not make me lazy.”

Apparently, this starting-out money did the trick, along with other valuable lessons she learned along the way:

It’s a great apartment. But it poses the question: Does Robert Redford’s kid really have to be living in a one-bedroom apartment?

Indeed it does, says Amy Redford:

“Because I want to have my life reflect who I am and what I create and what makes me the most comfortable, …

“I’ve seen people go down the road of once they get money, all of a sudden they need two cars and a bigger house, and they either lose the relationship or lose their children in the process.”

Good point, whether you come from money like Ms. Redford or not:

Look within for happiness and live within your means—you’ll be happier in the long run.