But Redford was happy to talk about his pal. When I heard that famous voice on the phone, I said: \u201cWait a minute, let me get a pen and pencil. I mean, a pen and pen. No, a pen and paper.\u201d<\/p>\n
He just laughed, accustomed to women getting flustered.<\/p>\n
I heard from someone on his team about seven years later. Redford wanted to offer me a role in a movie he was directing called Quiz Show. It was just one line \u2013 \u201cExcuse me, are you the son?\u201d \u2013 uttered by a woman who\u2019s at a book party trying to chat up Ralph Fiennes\u2019s Charles Van Doren, the fraudulent quiz whizz and son of the renowned Shakespearean scholar Mark Van Doren.<\/p>\n
I wrote Redford a note, explaining that I was too shy to act in a glossy movie. I couldn\u2019t even muster the nerve to do TV as myself.<\/p>\n
He sent a handwritten letter back, telling me that being shy was not a good excuse and that he was shy and you had to push past that and take risks. It was a charming letter \u2013 and I vowed to take his advice in the future.<\/p>\n
Years later, I got to know Redford over friendly lunches and dinners and interviews for the Times and at Harvard\u2019s Kennedy School. And that rarest of things happened: he was everything you hoped he would be. I had the same experience when I spent that week interviewing Newman.<\/p>\n
Both men were elusive, private, funny, generous and self-deprecating. They both liked painting and writing poetry. (Newman\u2019s poetry \u2013 and humour \u2013 was goofier.) And they both struggled with the sex symbol role.<\/p>\n
[\u00a0Paul Newman: \u2018He was kind of like a big kid himself. He just loved to play,\u2019 daughter saysOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cTo work as hard as I\u2019ve worked to accomplish anything and then have some yo-yo come up and say, \u2018Take off those dark glasses and let\u2019s have a look at those blue eyes\u2019 is really discouraging,\u201d Newman told me, adding: \u201cUsually, I just say, \u2018I would take off my sunglasses, madam, but my pants would fall down.\u2019\u201d What if his eyes turned brown, he wondered ruefully, and he died a failure?<\/p>\n Redford chafed at the chatter about his blond locks. At first, he told me, it felt great when he became a top Hollywood hunk with Butch Cassidy and The Way We Were. But then the constant references to his looks and some \u201cout of whack\u201d fan run-ins made it \u201cexhausting\u201d. He felt like he was being put in a cage and wanted to protest, \u201cNo, I\u2019m an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n When I talked to him for his solitary and horrific sailboat yarn, All Is Lost, in 2013, about ageing on-screen and whether it became harder to do close-ups, he replied: \u201cWell, let\u2019s get something straight. I don\u2019t see myself as beautiful. I was a kid who was freckle-faced, and they used to call me \u2018hay head\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n When Redford got kicked out of college in Colorado and lost his baseball scholarship for carousing too much, he went to be an underfed bohemian in Europe, trying his hand at painting. He wore a beret and stripy T-shirt but failed to impress French girls, who thought he was too ignorant about politics.<\/p>\n![\"Robert](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/W4T2VIBM4ZBFJPRI55RXGQFUOM.jpg\")
Robert Redford (left) as Sundance Kid and Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Photograph: John Springer Collection\/Corbis via Getty Images <\/p>\n