Actor Robert Redford has died at age 89, and as fans reflect on his long career, many are also remembering his deep connection with fellow Hollywood legend Paul Newman.
Their friendship was one of the most admired in the film industry after the two actors first came together on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969.
At the time, Redford, who created the Sundance Film Festival, was still an up-and-coming actor, while Newman was already a major star.
The studio had concerns about casting Redford, but Newman made it clear he wanted him in the film.
“When I first met Paul, I came in contact with one of his virtues, which was generosity. In the film Butch Cassidy, I wasn’t…the studio didn’t want me. I wasn’t as well known as he was. And he wanted me in the film…That was very complimentary to me, because that’s, I think, how we both saw our profession, that acting was about craft,” Redford said to ABC in 2008.
The pair were also known for pulling elaborate pranks on each other, with one of the most famous involving a Porsche Redford gifted to Newman for his 50th birthday, only to have it returned to him weeks later compacted into a box.
Redford eventually melted it down into a sculpture and placed it in Newman’s garden. “The thing that moved along is that Paul really likes to have fun and he loves to laugh and he really especially loves to laugh at his own jokes, and some of them are just really awful,” Redford said.
When Newman died in 2008, Redford reflected on the friendship with warmth, saying it still lived on despite Newman’s absence. “It still exists, even though he’s not with us anymore,” he said at the time.
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