Redford on Newman: ‘I have lost a real friend’

Robert Redford and Paul Newman were on-screen accomplices in such films as “The Sting” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” but their real-life friendship goes much deeper.

“There is a point where feelings go beyond words,” Redford said in a statement on Saturday on hearing the news that Newman had died at 83, “I have lost a real friend. My life — and this country — is better for his being in it.”

The two film legends first collaborated in 1969, on the Western comedy “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” in which they played the title roles.

But their partnership peaked in 1973, when they starred in “The Sting” — a film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Both movies were big hits — but then the actors moved on to other projects, and unfortunately, fewer collaborations.

“All these years went by and nobody came up with any ideas that were anything but corny and kind of low grade so we just decided probably that wasn’t going to happen,” Redford told Reuters in 2005.

At the time, they were discussing reuniting for a possible adaptation of Bill Bryson’s “A Walk In The Woods.” Newman retired in 2007, citing a failing memory.

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