The Three Questions: Robert Redford, Paul Newman, and the Gift of Time

Prologue: Two Kinds of Fear

Dr. Sarah Chen had worked as a cardiologist at Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for fourteen years. In that time, she’d learned to recognize two kinds of fear in patients who had just undergone cardiac procedures. The first was clinical: concern about prognosis, medication, lifestyle changes. The second was existential: the sudden awareness of mortality, the realization that time is finite, and the question of whether they’d been living the life they meant to live.

On May 17th, 2005, at approximately 6:00 p.m., Dr. Chen watched as Robert Redford experienced the second kind of fear.

Chapter 1: The Heart Scare

Robert Redford, 68 years old, had been feeling off for weeks. Fatigue, occasional dizziness, a sensation in his chest he’d been ignoring because acknowledging it meant admitting something was wrong. His doctor had insisted on tests. The tests revealed cardiac arrhythmia—not life-threatening, but serious enough to require a procedure.

Redford scheduled it quickly, quietly, not telling many people. He didn’t want the attention or the worry. But he told Paul Newman.

Newman, 79 years old, was dealing with his own health issues—though Redford didn’t know the extent yet. Newman drove to Cedar Sinai the moment he heard Redford was out of surgery.

When Newman walked into the hospital room, Redford was sitting up in bed, wearing a hospital gown, monitors beeping steadily beside him. He looked small, vulnerable, more human than Newman had seen him in years.

“You scared the hell out of me,” Newman said, closing the door behind him.

“I scared myself,” Redford admitted. His voice was quiet. “I woke up this morning thinking it was a routine thing, a quick procedure, I’d be home by dinner. But when they put me under, when I went to sleep, not knowing if I’d wake up, Paul, I thought about all the things I haven’t done yet.”

Newman sat down in the chair beside the bed. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem. I don’t know. I’ve been so busy, so focused on work, on Sundance, on the next film, the next project. And I realized lying there this morning that I can’t remember the last time I did something just because I wanted to. Not because it was good for my career or good for the festival or good for my image, just because it would make me happy.”

He looked at Newman. “I’m 68 years old. When did I stop doing things that make me happy?”

Chapter 2: The Three Questions

Newman was quiet for a moment, then leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You do, but stop wasting it.”

Redford blinked. “What?”

“You said you thought you had more time,” Newman clarified. “You do. You’re fine. The doctors fixed the problem. You’ll probably live another twenty years. But Robert, you can’t waste those twenty years the way you’ve been wasting the last ten.”

Redford felt something sharp in his chest that had nothing to do with the arrhythmia. “What do you mean?”

Newman held his gaze. “I mean, you’ve been running for years. You’ve been running toward the next thing, the next accomplishment, the next success, and you’ve been so focused on running forward that you’ve forgotten to stop and actually live.”

He paused. “I’m going to ask you three questions, and I want you to answer them honestly. Not with the answer you think sounds good—with the truth.”

Redford nodded.

“First question,” Newman said. “What haven’t you done? What’s the thing you’ve been putting off, telling yourself you’ll do it someday, but someday never comes?”

Redford thought about this. Several things came to mind immediately. “I’ve always wanted to spend a full summer at Sundance. Not working, not running the festival, just living there, hiking every day, reading, being present.”

“Have you ever done that?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s always something more important. A film to make, a festival to run, a meeting that can’t be rescheduled.”

Newman nodded slowly.

“Second question. Who are you waiting for? Who’s the person you keep meaning to spend more time with, but you’re waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect circumstances?”

This one was harder. Redford thought about his children, his grandchildren, his friends. “My grandkids,” he said finally. “I see them on holidays, special occasions, but I don’t really know them. Not the way I should. I’m waiting for them to be older, I think. Old enough to have real conversations with, but they’re growing up while I’m waiting.”

“Third question,” Newman said. His voice was softer now. “What are you saving yourself for? What’s the thing you think you’ll do when you have more time, more energy, when circumstances are better?”

Redford’s throat tightened. “Everything. I’m saving everything for later. I tell myself I’ll slow down next year. I’ll take more time off when this project finishes. I’ll prioritize relationships when work calms down. But work never calms down. Next year never comes. And I keep saving my life for some future version of myself who has time to actually live it.”

Newman reached across and put his hand on Redford’s arm. “Robert, listen to me. You had a heart scare today. It was minor, but it was a warning. Your body is telling you that you’re not invincible. That time is finite, and you need to start living like it.”

Redford’s eyes were wet now.

“I’m 79,” Newman continued. “I’ve got my own health problems. Problems I haven’t told you about yet because I didn’t want to worry you, but I’m running out of time. And the biggest regret I have, and the thing that keeps me up at night, is all the time I wasted doing things that didn’t matter instead of being with people who did.”

He squeezed Redford’s arm. “Don’t waste your twenty years. Don’t wait for someday. Spend the summer at Sundance. Get to know your grandkids. Do the things that make you happy instead of the things that make you successful. Because success doesn’t mean anything if you’re too tired or too old or too dead to enjoy it.”

Redford was crying now. Not loud crying, just tears running down his face. “How do I do that?” he asked. “How do I change everything? How do I step away from work when work is all I’ve known for forty years?”

“You don’t change everything,” Newman said. “You change one thing, then another, then another. You start saying no to things that don’t matter. You start saying yes to things that do. You prioritize differently. Not perfectly, just differently.”

He leaned back in the chair. “And you call me every week. Not to talk about work, not to talk about projects, just to check in. To make sure we’re both still here, to make sure we’re not wasting the time we have left.”

“Every week,” Redford repeated.

“Every week,” Newman confirmed. “Because we’re both running out of time and I don’t want to waste whatever time we have left talking about things that don’t matter.”

Chapter 3: The Shift

Over the next three years, Redford changed how he lived. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t overnight, but it was real.

In the summer of 2005, for the first time in thirty years, Redford spent six weeks at Sundance doing nothing but living there. He hiked every morning. He read in the afternoons. He sat on his porch in the evenings and watched the sun set over the mountains. No film shoots, no festival planning, just living.

He started seeing his grandchildren more—not just on holidays, regular visits. He’d fly to wherever they were, spend a weekend, take them hiking or to museums, or just sit and talk. He learned their interests, their fears, their dreams. He became grandpa instead of the famous grandfather they saw once a year.

He and Newman talked every Sunday, 7:00 p.m., a standing phone call. Sometimes they talked for ten minutes, sometimes for two hours. They talked about everything except work—family, health, memories, the small details of their lives that usually got lost in the noise of careers and obligations.

In 2006, Redford turned down three film offers—good films, films that would have been successful—but he turned them down because making them would have meant missing his grandson’s graduation, his granddaughter’s soccer season, the summer at Sundance he’d promised himself. People in the industry thought he was retiring, stepping back, losing his edge. Redford didn’t care what they thought. For the first time in his life, he was living for himself instead of for the image people had of him.

Chapter 4: The Final Lesson

In the fall of 2007, Newman’s health deteriorated rapidly. The cancer he’d been quietly battling was winning.

Redford visited him in Connecticut. They sat together in Newman’s study. Newman was thin, weak, but still sharp, still present.

“Thank you,” Newman said quietly.

“For what?”

“For listening. In 2005, when I told you not to waste your time. You actually did it. You changed how you lived.”

Redford’s throat tightened. “You saved my life, Paul. Not the doctors. You… You told me I was wasting my time. And you were right. And these last three years, they’ve been the best three years of my life because I’ve actually been living them.”

Newman smiled. “Good, because I’m running out of time and I needed to know that at least one of us learned the lesson before it was too late.”

“How long?” Redford asked.

“Not long. Months, maybe. The doctors are optimistic, but I’m realistic.”

Newman looked out the window. “But I’m not scared. I’m not angry because I didn’t waste the time I had. I spent it with people I love, doing things that mattered. And that’s enough.”

Redford reached across and took Newman’s hand. “I’m not ready to lose you.”

“I know. But you’re going to keep living the way you’ve been living these last three years. You’re going to keep prioritizing what matters. You’re going to keep saying no to things that waste your time. And you’re going to live long enough to see your great-grandchildren. And when you do, you’re going to tell them about me. About what I told you in that hospital room. About how a heart scare can be a gift if you pay attention to it.”

Newman squeezed Redford’s hand. “Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Paul Newman died on September 26th, 2008.

Robert Redford kept his promise.

Chapter 5: The Ripple Effect

In 2015, a journalist interviewed Redford for a profile on his later career. The journalist noted that Redford had slowed down significantly after 2005. Fewer films, more time at Sundance, more privacy.

“Did something change in 2005?” the journalist asked.

Redford was quiet for a moment. “I had a health scare, minor cardiac issue, but it scared me enough that I had to face some things I’d been avoiding.”

“What things?”

“That I was wasting my life. That I was so focused on achievement that I’d forgotten to actually live. That I was saving all my time for someday and someday was running out.”

The journalist asked what changed his perspective.

“Paul Newman visited me in the hospital,” Redford said, “and he asked me three questions that I’ve thought about every day since.” He listed them. “What haven’t you done? Who are you waiting for? What are you saving yourself for? Those three questions made me realize I’d been treating my life like a dress rehearsal. Like the real living would happen later, when I had more time, when things calmed down. But Paul was dying. He knew it even then, though he didn’t tell me how bad it was. And he used whatever time he had left to make sure I didn’t make the same mistake.”

The journalist asked how those questions changed Redford’s life.

“I started living,” Redford said simply. “I spent summers at Sundance. I got to know my grandchildren. I said no to projects that would have taken me away from what mattered. I stopped achieving and started living. And Paul was right. These last ten years have been better than the forty before them because I’m not performing anymore. I’m just being.”

Chapter 6: The Legacy

Today, Robert Redford is 88 years old. He lives primarily at Sundance. He sees his grandchildren and great-grandchildren regularly. He works occasionally when a project speaks to him. But he doesn’t work out of obligation or habit or fear. And every Sunday at 7:00 p.m., he sits alone and thinks about the phone calls he used to have with Paul Newman. The conversations that kept both of them grounded, the friendship that taught him how to live.

In a 2023 interview, Redford was asked about the most important moment in his life.

“May 17th, 2005,” he said without hesitation. “The day I had a heart scare and Paul Newman came to the hospital and told me I was wasting my life.”

The interviewer asked what Newman had said.

“He asked me three questions,” Redford explained. “And those three questions changed everything. They forced me to admit I was living for the future instead of the present. That I was saving my life for some imaginary tomorrow when I’d have time to actually live it.”

He paused. “Paul was dying. He knew it. And he used that hospital visit to save me. Not from the heart problem, from myself. From the pattern of deferring life, of waiting for the perfect moment, of never quite getting around to the things that mattered.”

The interviewer asked if Redford still thinks about those questions.

“Every day,” Redford said. “Every single day for the last eighteen years. What haven’t I done? Who am I waiting for? What am I saving myself for? And every day, I make sure the answers don’t pile up. I make sure I’m doing the things I want to do. Spending time with the people I love, living instead of deferring.”

He smiled. “Paul gave me twenty more years, not just by telling me to take care of my health, but by telling me to take care of my life. To stop wasting time, to start living like time was finite—because it is.”

Chapter 7: Passing It On

The story of what Paul Newman said in that hospital room has become part of Redford’s philosophy. He tells it to his grandchildren, to young actors who ask for advice, to anyone who seems to be deferring life the way he used to.

“Time is finite,” he tells them. “And most of us waste it. We waste it waiting for the right moment. Waiting for circumstances to be perfect. Waiting for someday. But someday is a lie. There’s only today. And you need to live today like it’s the only day you have. Because someday it will be.”

The three questions Newman asked have become a framework for many who struggle with priorities.

What haven’t you done?
Who are you waiting for?
What are you saving yourself for?

Simple questions, but powerful because they force honesty. They force confrontation with the gap between how we’re living and how we want to live.

Epilogue: The Gift of Friendship and Time

Robert Redford had a heart scare in 2005, and what Paul Newman said in that hospital room changed how he lived the next twenty years. Not because Newman gave him medical advice, but because Newman gave him permission to stop deferring life, to stop saving himself for someday, to start living.

Now, if this story moved you, ask yourself those three questions. What haven’t you done? Who are you waiting for? What are you saving yourself for? And then do something about the answers—because time is finite and someday is running out.