Paul Newman

Paul Newman (born January 26, 1925, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.—died September 26, 2008, Westport, Connecticut) was an American actor and director whose striking good looks, intelligence, and charisma became hallmarks in a film career that spanned more than 50 years, during which time he became known for his compelling performances of iconic antiheroes. He was also active in a number of philanthropic endeavours.

Early life

Newman grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He attended Ohio University—from which he was reportedly expelled—before serving as a U.S. Navy radio operator during World War II. Upon his discharge, he enrolled at Ohio’s Kenyon College (B.A., 1949), where he acted in a number of plays. After graduation he appeared in stock productions, but he returned home following the death of his father in 1950. Newman ran the family’s sporting-goods store for one year before enrolling in Yale University’s drama department. He left the program in 1952 and moved to New York City, where he studied at The Actors Studio, which he credited for his later acting success.

First films

In 1953 Newman made his Broadway debut in William Inge’s Picnic. While working on the production, he met Joanne Woodward, an understudy. The two married in 1958 and became one of Hollywood’s most enduring couples. Newman’s performance in Picnic led to a film contract with Warner Brothers, and in 1954 he made his first feature, the widely panned The Silver Chalice, which the actor claimed was the worst movie made in the 1950s. Despite his inauspicious film debut, Newman was earning positive reviews for his work in live television dramas, notably Our Town (1955) and Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), which aired on Producers’ Showcase and The United States Steel Hour, respectively. In addition, he continued to act on the stage.

Classically handsome—with piercing blue eyes—and possessing a natural magnetism, Newman was soon offered another screen role. In 1956 he starred in Robert Wise’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, and his impressive portrayal of boxer Rocky Graziano secured his future in films. A string of acclaimed performances in notable dramas soon followed. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) was a highly praised adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play that also starred Elizabeth Taylor and Burl Ives; for his performance as a self-destructive former football player who is at odds with his father, Newman earned his first Academy Award nomination. The Long, Hot Summer (1958), which was based on short stories by William Faulkner, was the first of 10 feature films in which he would costar with Woodward. The drama centres on a drifter who becomes entangled with a wealthy family. In the biopic The Left Handed Gun (1958), Newman appeared as Billy the Kid. He closed out the decade with the melodrama The Young Philadelphians (1959), in which he played a manipulative attorney.

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The antiheroes: “Fast” Eddie Felson to Butch Cassidy

In 1960 Newman led an international cast in Otto Preminger’s epic film Exodus, based on the novel by Leon Uris about the founding of Israel. In 1961 he essayed the role that perhaps best defined his screen persona, that of pool shark “Fast” Eddie Felson in The Hustler. Earning him another Oscar nomination, The Hustler was the first in a series of 1960s films in which Newman eschewed more-traditional leading-man roles to portray antiheroic protagonists. In Hud (1963)—which was based on the Larry McMurtry novel Horseman, Pass By—he played a womanizing self-centred manipulator who is anxious to control his aging father’s cattle empire. In a testament to Newman’s likability, moviegoers embraced the character, much to the surprise of the actor, who received his third Oscar nomination. The mystery Harper (1966) featured the actor as a hard-drinking private detective. He reprised the role for the 1975 sequel, The Drowning Pool. After Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966), Newman starred in the revisionist western Hombre (1967), which was based on an Elmore Leonard novel. In Cool Hand Luke (1967) Newman gave another Oscar-nominated performance, creating one of the screen’s most-memorable characters, a wisecracking convict who stands up to his sadistic jailers. The series of performances solidified Newman’s image as an ingratiating iconoclast.

Two enormously popular films teamed Newman with costar Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill. The comic western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) received seven Oscar nominations and was among the top-grossing films of the year. In 1973 the pair portrayed Depression-era con men in The Sting, a widely seen work that won an Academy Award for best picture.