Cuban President Fidel Castro, who has charmed some of Hollywood's biggest names, has paid a call on Robert Redford at his Havana hotel and discussed his latest film, on revolutionary icon Che Guevara.
Mr Redford was in Cuba over the weekend wearing his producer's hat for a private screening of The Motorcycle Diariesfor the widow and children of the legendary Argentine guerrilla fighter, who was Mr Castro's comrade-in-arms.
"He came to me. ... He seemed in good health, good humour, good spirit," Mr Redford said of the 77-year-old Cuban leader after their brief encounter at the Hotel Nacional yesterday.
Mr Redford last saw Castro in 1988. The actor was said to have gone scuba-diving with the Cuban leader and was questioned by US officials on his return to the United States.
"I came to present the film that I produced on Che Guevara and I am very happy to be in Cuba," Mr Redford said at Sunday's screening of the film made by his company, Southfork Pictures.
The film, directed by Brazilian Mr Walter Salles, is based on the diaries Guevara wrote on a nine-month trip through South America on an ancient Norton motorcycle in 1952 when he was an asthmatic 23-year-old medical student.