The two iconic actors Gerard Butler idolised: “How could I not want to do that?”
It’s a rare thing for actors to be able to have lasting chemistry together across multiple films.
Old masters of the trade include dancing duo Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who performed in ten films together, and the on-and-off-screen magnetism between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, who starred in nine films together throughout the 1940s and 1960s. But authentic male friendships are harder to find in Hollywood.
There are some modern-day Hollywood bromances, like Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, whose off-screen friendship has created amazing films like the Cornetto Trilogy, or the friendship between action comedy buddies Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, or even the on-screen connection between Hollywood dads, George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
But for Scottish actor Gerard Butler – the bloke best known for action fare like Olympus Has Fallen, 300, and Den of Thieves – there’s one Hollywood duo that towers above the rest: Paul Newman and Robert Redford.
The pair cemented their legend in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, playing two carefree outlaws legging it to Bolivia after a bank job goes pear-shaped. It was Newman who actually vouched for Redford, pulling him into the project when he was still a relative nobody in Hollywood. The two first crossed paths on the 1968 shoot, introduced by director George Roy Hill in New York, and the spark was instant.
Their chemistry on screen not only reaffirmed Newman’s A-list status but also flung Redford right into the spotlight. The film scooped four Academy Awards and swept the Baftas, breaking records along the way. Off camera, the friendship stuck as well. The pair fast became as tight as the characters they played, setting the template for one of cinema’s great bromances. Their easy charm, razor wit, and frankly unfair good looks made them the envy of just about everyone else in the business.
For Gerard Butler, it was these caper films involving robberies, crime and outlaws, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting – a comedy crime film also by the same director of Butch Cassidy, where Redford and Newman reunited four years later – that presented an endlessly fun and wild world that he idolised as a little boy.
Butler also grew up idolising Steve McQueen, who earned the nickname, the ‘King of Cool’ and became Paul Newman’s worst enemy after the two got competitive on the filming of John Guillermin’s 1974 action movie The Towering Inferno.
But really, what Butler loved most was the “heart, adventure, and mischief” Newman and Redford had between them. He’s said he couldn’t fathom why anyone wouldn’t want to be in a world where those sorts of friendships exist.
For Butler, and plenty of others like him, it’s rare to hear that said out loud. Here’s a guy best known for tough, brawny roles, talking about the beauty of two men simply having each other’s backs. Newman and Redford weren’t just Hollywood’s idea of rugged; they were mates who stuck by one another when everyone else was being shoved into rivalries. In a town built on competition and one-upmanship, that kind of bond stood out. And it still says something now that watching men on screen look out for each other can be just as inspiring as watching them throw punches.
