Obituary - Paul Newman
Paul Newman has passed away after battling lung cancer
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Saturday, 27, Sep 2008 04:15
inthenews.co.uk looks back at the life of an acting legend, racing driver and humanitarian.
Paul Newman died on Friday at the age of 83 after battling cancer and the worlds of cinema, sport and charity are poorer for his loss.
Born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in January 1925, Newman was not only an Academy award and Golden Globe-winner, but a racing car championship winner and the founder of food company Newman's Own, responsible for the donation of more than $220m million to charity since its 1982 inception.
Though his movie career got off to an inauspicious start, with Newman taking out a full-page advertisement to apologise for his performance in 1954's The Silver Chalice - which he is said to have called "the worst motion picture produced during the 1950s" - the blue-eyed boy soon became a screen legend, renowned for his rebellious, iconic characters in the likes of The Hustler (1961) and Cool Hand Luke (1967).
Partnerships also defined Newman's career, whether making cinema history with Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy (1969) and the Sundance Kid as well as The Sting (1973), or as one half of a married couple who embodied true love, having celebrated his golden wedding anniversary with Joanne Woodward in January 2008.
According to Newman, the success of his marriage was thanks to "great impatience tempered by patience".
"When you have been together this long, sometimes you drive each other nuts, but underneath that is some core of affection and respect," he told AARP magazine in 2005.
In fact, Newman's marriage exemplified how truly un-Hollywood one of the greats of the silver screen was. He and Woodward lived in Westport, Connecticut for the near-entirety of their marriage and when questioned about infidelity, he once replied: "Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?"
While he described motorsport as "the first thing that I ever found I had any grace in", observers of his huge generosity or his ever-understated performances - whether from his starmaking 1960s turns to his terrifying portrayal of a mob boss in 2002's Road to Perdition - would have argued that grace embodied a true cinema legend.
An Oscar nominee ten times over, Newman claimed an Academy award in 1986 for his reprisal of the role of 'Fast Eddie' Felson in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money, after which his cinematic career largely took a backseat to his love for racing and his charitable endeavours.
"Paul Newman's craft was acting. His passion was racing. His love was his family and friends. And his heart and soul were dedicated to helping make the world a better place for all," said Newman's Own vice-chairman Robert Forrester.
"Paul had an abiding belief in the role that luck plays in one's life, and its randomness. He was quick to acknowledge the good fortune he had in his own life, beginning with being born in America, and was acutely aware of how unlucky so many others were. True to his character, he quietly devoted himself to helping offset this imbalance."
Newman died at his Westport home on Friday, surrounded by his family and friends.