Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is remembered as one of the defining Paul Newman films, the role that cemented his easy, roguish charm for a new generation. What almost no one remembers is that the studio didn’t want him for it at all.
Newman wasn’t even their first choice for the part. He was their backup plan, brought in only after their real target turned the role down.
The Studio Wanted Someone Else First
When 20th Century Fox began developing the 1969 Western, the studio’s first choice to play Butch Cassidy opposite a young Robert Redford was Jack Lemmon. Steve McQueen was also considered for a lead role in early discussions, with disputes over billing order reportedly playing a part in why he didn’t take it.
Only after these options fell through did Newman enter the picture, initially eyed for the Sundance Kid role before the filmmakers ultimately decided he was better suited to play Butch, with Redford taking Sundance.
A Partnership Born by Accident
The pairing turned out to be lightning in a bottle. Newman and Redford’s on-screen chemistry was so effortless that audiences and critics alike praised it as one of the great duos in film history, a friendship so convincing that many assumed the two had known each other for years before filming began.
In truth, the film was their first major collaboration. It launched a friendship that would carry into their next film together, The Sting, four years later, cementing them as one of cinema’s most beloved screen pairings.
A Role Almost Written Off Before It Began
Had Lemmon or McQueen accepted the part, Newman’s career trajectory might have looked entirely different. Instead, Butch Cassidy became one of the highest-grossing films of 1969 and one of the defining performances of his career, blending charm, comic timing, and quiet vulnerability in a way few Westerns of the era attempted.
The film earned four Academy Awards and remains a touchstone of the buddy-film genre it helped popularize.
A Lesson in Second Chances
Newman rarely spoke publicly about being a backup choice, but those who knew him said he found a certain irony in it, that one of his most iconic roles came from a series of other actors saying no. It became a quiet reminder, he later said, that timing in Hollywood is often as important as talent.
Today, it is almost impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. But for a brief moment in the late 1960s, Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy was not the plan at all. It was the backup.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons (public domain / Creative Commons).