(NEXSTAR) – Robert Redford’s impressive body of work spans well over half a century and includes dozens of beloved feature films. But if you had asked Redford himself which movie he was most fond of, he likely would have given one of two answers.
The late film icon, who passed away this week at the age of 89, had said during a 2011 appearance on “Piers Morgan Live” that “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” was his favorite of his own films, in no small part because he enjoyed making it.
“I think ‘Butch Cassidy’ because it was so much fun,” he told Morgan during the interview. “In other words, I love to ride, I like doing the stunts, you know? And Paul [Newman] and I had a great relationship that just evolved during the making of the film. But it was so much fun, it was in country I love, getting on a horse, being an outlaw, which I felt like most of my life.”
He reserved his only negative comment on “Butch Cassidy” for a scene set to “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” a song written specifically for the movie by Burt Bacharach and Hal David (and which earned both men Academy Awards for Best Original Song at the 42nd Academy Awards).
“It was a wonderful script by Bill Goldman, and beautifully directed by George Roy Hill, except for that song that was in it,” Redford told Morgan. (Redford, like some of the film’s critics, said he thought the the song felt out-of-place in the film, but later changed his tune somewhat and acknowledged he was “wrong” in a statement to USA Today.)
In 2018, however, Redford told The Telegraph that “The Sting” might actually be his No. 1 over “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
“I enjoyed making both of them, but if I were to step way back and be truly objective, I would say, as much as I love ‘Butch Cassidy,’ I think ‘The Sting’ is one of the finest films ever, and that belongs to George Roy Hill. He’s the guy who designed it, who came up with the music and did everything,” Redford said.
He added that he had recently seen the film after “many, many years” and remembered thinking, “‘God, this is a really good movie. Really well made.’”
It’s also likely no coincidence that two of his favorite films saw him collaborating with close friend Paul Newman.
“He changed my life: he agreed to have me in the movie that I shouldn’t have been in,” he told Esquire in 2017, referring to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and the studio executives who wanted a bigger name to star alongside Newman.
“And Paul and I spent an evening together, drinking and talking. After, he said to the studio, ‘I want to go with Redford.’ … But that generosity really struck me hard, that he could be that generous and have that kind of integrity.”
Redford had shown appreciation for plenty of his other projects over the years. He explained, though, that he had held a soft spot for those he chose to star in, or direct, despite skepticism from studios and critics.
“I think probably the high points are ones where I was able to make a film that I was told I couldn’t,” he said in 2002, after being chosen to receive that year’s Academy Honorary Award. He included “All the President’s Men,” “The Candidate,” “Ordinary People” and “A River Runs Through It” in that category.
“There are performances that I am pleased with but I’d rather not get into that, but the films that I’ve made, probably the ones I love most favorably, are the ones I was told would never get made, but by perseverance they did,” Redford said.