When Robert Redford died at his home in Utah on September 16, 2025, at 89, the man who changed the course of his career had already been gone seventeen years. Paul Newman died on September 26, 2008, at 83. They made only two films together. The friendship lasted four decades — and it started with Newman doing something Redford never forgot.
He stood up for him
In 1968, George Roy Hill was casting Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Newman was already one of the biggest stars in America. Redford was not. He’d worked steadily in TV and film, including Barefoot in the Park, but 20th Century Fox wanted a name that matched Newman’s. Bigger stars were floated. Newman wanted Redford.
“When the studio didn’t want me for the film — it wanted somebody as well known as Paul — he stood up for me,” Redford wrote in Time after Newman’s death. “I don’t know how many people would have done that.”
The movie opened in 1969 and turned Butch and Sundance into two of the most recognizable characters in American film. Audiences felt something real between them: one talked his way out of trouble, the other watched and waited. A lot of that wasn’t acting. They liked each other. They just weren’t interested in saying so.
The jokes were the affection
By 1975, Newman was 50 and deep into racing — deep enough that Redford was tired of hearing about it. For the birthday, he found a wrecked Porsche, put a ribbon on it, and had it delivered to Newman’s house in Connecticut. Newman said nothing. Weeks later, a crate showed up at Redford’s rented place nearby: Newman had crushed the car into a block of metal. Redford had the block turned into an ugly garden sculpture and sent it back to Newman’s yard. Neither man ever mentioned it.
The same instinct showed up in public. When Redford needed a reference for a New York apartment, Newman wrote the board: Redford had owed him $120 for over three years and, under the circumstances, he couldn’t recommend him for anything. Redford kept the letter. In 1992, honoring Newman at the Kennedy Center, he read it out loud with Newman sitting right there.
For a stretch, their Connecticut homes sat about a mile apart. Their families got close. The hard time was the point. “There was great affection there that nobody would particularly show,” was how Redford put the friendship — and the pranks did the showing.
Two films, and the one they never made
In 1973 they reunited for The Sting. It won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. They didn’t rush a third. Redford later said the chemistry worked because neither man needed to own every scene — each knew when to step forward and when to step back. On Butch Cassidy, Newman was the lively one. On The Sting, they flipped.
A third film stayed a maybe for years. Redford found Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, about two aging men hiking the Appalachian Trail, and thought of Newman. Newman’s health wouldn’t allow it. Redford made the movie in 2015 with Nick Nolte. The version with Newman is one of those films that never got made.
The last word
Newman was diagnosed with lung cancer. Shortly before he died, he sent Redford a letter that, as later reported, closed where it had started: “You were the Sundance to my Cassidy — always.”
Redford didn’t have a neat summary for the loss. After Newman’s death he said he’d lost a true friend, and that his life was better for Newman’s presence. What he kept coming back to was 1968: a studio didn’t want him, and a star who didn’t have to fight for him did it anyway.
Redford spent much of the rest of his life opening that kind of door for other people — the Sundance Institute, the festival, a path for filmmakers Hollywood might never have noticed. Someone established had stood up for him. He spent decades standing up for everyone else.
They made two movies. More than half a century after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, people still talk about them like they spent their whole careers side by side. Behind Butch and Sundance were Paul and Bob: competitors who knew when to let the other shine, and friends who could turn a wrecked Porsche into a months-long conversation without saying a word.
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Opinions belong to readers.