We have lost another great actor as Paul Newman has died due to complications from lung cancer at his home in Westport, Connecticut at age 83. Actor, director, entrepreneur, humanitarian and auto racing enthusiast, he has won numerous awards throughout his life including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an Emmy award as well as several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing and his race teams won several championships in open wheel Indy Car racing. He also founded Newman’s Own in 1982, which is a food company from which Newman donated all profits and royalties to charity, to date exceeding $220,000,000.
Born in Shaker Heights, Ohio to a Jewish father and a Slovak Catholic mother, Newman showed an early interest in theater. He made his acting debut at age seven in a school production of Robin Hood. He later briefly attended Ohio University before serving with the Navy in the Pacific theater during World War II. After the war, he studied acting at Yale University an at the Actor’s Studio in New York. Newman appeared in several Broadway plays before breaking in to film with The Silver Chalice in 1954. He quickly established himself with starring roles in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opposite Elizabeth Taylor and The Young Philadelphians. In 1955 he first appeared on television in a live broadcast of Our Town.
Starting in the 1960s, Newman starred in a long list of highly acclaimed films, such as The Hustler, Hud, Harper, Cool Hand Luke, The Towering Inferno, Slap Stick and the Verdict. He starred with Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting and in ten feature films with his wife Joanne Woodward. In recent years he starred in The Hudsucker Proxy, Road to Perdition, Empire Falls and Cars before announcing his retirement from acting in 2007. He and Redford had stated their intention to make one last film together, but it unfortunately never came to fruition.
Newman’s philanthropic endeavors include his Newman’s Own line of food products, the proceeds from which are donated to charity. Additionally, he started the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a residential summer camp for seriously ill children. He has also donated money to aid Kosovo refugees and to Kenyon College.
Paul Newman has always been a class act and a joy to watch on the screen. I can’t think of a film he has been in that I haven’t enjoyed, even if only for his performance alone. I was really hoping he and Redford could have gotten things together to make the screen adaptation of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, but, sadly, it will now never be. I had the great pleasure of meeting Newman while he was making The Hudsucker Proxy and spoke with him a few times. He was always very gracious in person and treated you like a friend, even if he didn’t know you. This was in Wilmington, North Carolina, which is on the coast. During a break in filming, Newman did some boating around the inlets off the coast and got his boat stuck at one point. The guy that happened along and pulled him free was rewarded with a case of wine and an invitation to the set. That’s not a profound story, but it’s something I heard first hand and will always remember about Paul Newman.
