EXCLUSIVE: The Story Robert Redford Never Wanted Revealed — How Hollywood Golden Boy Was Wild Teen Thug Who Broke Into Millionaires' Mansions… And Was Arrested At Girls' Convent School

Robert Redford has left behind a golden legacy on the big screen – and a little-known past as a teenage tearaway who once found himself arrested on the roof of a girls' convent school, RadarOnline.com can reveal.

Redford, whose death at 89 has rocked Hollywood, became one of the industry's most bankable stars in the 1970s with classics including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and All the President's Men.

But long before his matinee-idol looks and liberal activism defined him, he was a freckle-faced kid from Van Nuys, California, with a rebellious streak that shocked his family.

Friends recall a boy who broke into millionaire homes, stole gasoline and hubcaps and staged late-night escapades across Los Angeles.

William Coomber, Redford's childhood friend and later his stepbrother, said: "I guess I was his closest friend in those days. Those were wild times. It was the early '50s when being a member of a gang and wearing your hair in ducktails was the fashion.

"Bob and I had a gang called The Barons. We were about 15 at the time and always getting into trouble."

Coomber remembered nights spent sneaking out:

"He'd come and sleep over at my house, and we'd sneak out during the middle of the night. We'd go down to the local theater and climb the 50-foot tower atop the building. Then we'd unscrew the lightbulbs that illuminated the tower and bomb the sidewalk."

Other adventures took them to Bel Air, where Redford would break into the empty mansions of wealthy families wintering elsewhere.

"Bob wasn't out to steal anything – he just wanted to see how the 'other half' lived," Coomber said. "And just for fun, he'd skinny-dip in their pools."

Their antics escalated. At 16, the boys drove a beat-up jalopy around Los Angeles, siphoning gasoline from service-station hoses.

"At night Bob and I would go from gas station to gas station taking whatever gas was left in the rubber hoses that led from the pumps," Coomber recalled. "We'd get about a half-gallon, which was enough to get us to the next station."

When that grew old, they turned to stealing hubcaps, selling them for $20 a set.

Redford's father, Charles – a Standard Oil executive – despaired.

"He had all the prospects of a bum," Charles once admitted. "In those years, it looked as though Bob would never amount to a hill of beans. I was ready to give up on him. He was always getting into trouble because of his pranks."

One prank went too far: police arrested Redford and Coomber after catching them scrambling across the roof of Mount St. Mary's Convent School for Girls.

Charles tried to impose discipline, arranging summer work for his son at a shipping yard in El Segundo. But Bob was repeatedly discovered asleep inside packing crates.

"The yard manager who fired Bob told him, 'Son, you'll never make it with Standard Oil… in fact, you'll never make it anywhere,'" Charles recalled.

Despite the dire predictions, Redford eventually found his calling in the arts. He first studied painting, then turned to acting, winning an Academy Award for directing Ordinary People in 1981 and later founding the world-renowned Sundance Film Festival.

Yet those who knew him as a boy never forgot the wild streak.

"Bob and I still used to sneak out of the house after we were living together," Coomber said.

"Then we'd either go to a friend's house for an all-night party or we'd break into Universal Studios and wander around the movie sets."