“Hi, this is Bob,” a voice once told me over the phone.

“Bob?” I asked, trying to figure out who it could be.

And then: “Bob Redford.”

It was 2008, and Paul Newman was sick. His longtime assistant, Darice, was at the hospital with him and couldn’t get to her endlessly ringing phone. So, she passed along my number to calls she couldn’t pick up, knowing I’d take a message.

Born in Westport, Connecticut, I had the honor and luck of growing up around the glorious and complex Newman family. My family lived down the street from their home, and my mother was in an exercise class with Paul’s wife, the actress Joanne Woodward. I met Clea, one of their daughters, at the age of two, and we’ve been best friends ever since. I also got to know “Bob” Redford thanks to them, having always heard stories about him. In 2022, I originated and produced The Last Movie Stars, a documentary series about him and Joanne, directed by Ethan Hawke.

At a time when our country feels like it’s on fire, it’s hard to imagine a world without Redford and Newman.

I recently read a New York Times piece from 2016 on how their partnership, beginning in 1969, when Newman advocated for Redford to star in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, defined the ensuing era of cinema. They’re right. But it was so much more than that.

Think of the odds. American men, born 11 years apart. One, the dark-haired son of a Jewish sporting goods store owner in Ohio. The other, a blond WASP from what the old Hollywood guard used to call “the Coast” of California. The chances of them meeting and being cast in a film together were slim.

With Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, they became the most likable bad-guy bromance in American cinema. It was more than a buddy movie. They played bad guys, outlaws, train robbers, but their irresistible charm was also layered. You liked them not just because they were magnetic, but also for the core of decency that they exuded beneath the mischief.

They teamed up again in The Sting, in 1973, which cemented them as Hollywood legends and brought the musician Scott Joplin back into the mainstream. But their real work, the real substance, happened off-screen.

In 1988, Newman founded Hole in the Wall Gang, a free summer camp for chronically ill children, named after the gang in Butch Cassidy. Redford, on his end, founded the Sundance Film Festival in 1978, turning it into one of the most important platforms for independent film.

They also stood for their beliefs, though not in loud, self-congratulatory ways. Newman served as a U.S. delegate at a United Nations nuclear disarmament conference. Redford served as a trustee for the Natural Resources Defense Council, helping to preserve public lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. They supported causes, gave quietly, showed up, and didn’t ask for acknowledgment.

Newman and Redford were more than actors. They were outliers. They were reminders of what it meant to have character. To appreciate what you have. To give back in a way that endures. To believe in kindness, something we’re losing track of in the endless algorithmic loop of Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. They represented the American dream and were dreamboats to boot, too.

Amidst all of today’s noise, the quiet, confident, morally grounded man, the one who builds more than he destroys, has become nearly invisible.

With them gone, we’re losing role models. We’re losing the kind of American man who doesn’t need to dominate the room because he already knows who he is.

Beyond it all, we’ve lost two great men. They weren’t perfect. But they were real. And they made you want to be better.

We may never see this kind again. Still, one can always hope.

Robert Redford died on September 16, 2025, at age 89; Paul Newman died on September 26, 2008, at age 83

Emily Wachtel is a writer and filmmaker who originated and produced The Last Movie Stars, a six-part HBO Max series on the Newmans, directed by Ethan Hawke