NEWMAN, PAUL

born January 26, 1925, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. handsome and charismatic American film actor whose career has spanned four decades. He is best known for a series of roles in which he captures the darker, less heroic aspects of a character's nature. The son of a Catholic mother and Jewish father, Newman served as a navy radio operator during World War II and enrolled at Ohio's Kenyon College upon his discharge (B.A., 1949). He completed one year of graduate studies in theatre at Yale University but gained his most important experience at New York's Actors Studio. On the basis of his first Broadway play, Picnic (1953), Newman signed a film contract with Warner Brothers and in 1954 made one of the most disastrous screen debuts ever in the biblical epic The Silver Chalice, which Newman himself later described as the worst picture of the decade. He was to fare better with two well-received performances in live television dramas (Our Town and Bang the Drum Slowly ) and secured his future in films with his impressive portrayal of boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). Newman's other notable films of the late 1950s include The Rack (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958; for which he received his first Academy Award nomination), The Long, Hot Summer (1958), The Left-Handed Gun (1958), and The Young Philadelphians (1959). In 1961 Newman essayed the role which perhaps best defines his screen persona, that of pool shark Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler. Earning for him another Oscar nomination, The Hustler was the first in a series of 1960s films in which Newman portrayed antiheroic protagonists. Hud (1963), Harper (1966), Hombre (1967), and Cool Hand Luke (1967) further solidified his image as an ingratiating iconoclast. Two enormously popular films teamed Newman with costar Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill, both films featuring the Newman-Redford duo as a pair of charming outlaws. Newman's performance in the comic western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) was hailed as his best work in comedy to date. The film received seven Oscar nominations and was among the top-grossing films of the year. In 1973 Newman and Redford portrayed Depression-era conmen in The Sting, a film that won that year's Oscar for best picture and matched Butch Cassidy's popularity at the box office. Since the 1970s, Newman's popularity has afforded him the luxury of being eclectic in his choice of material. He worked for a number of noted directors on films that, though box office failures at the time of their release, have gone on to become cult favourites. John Huston directed Newman in the title role of the darkly comic The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) and again in the British private-eye thriller The Mackintosh Man (1973). Director Robert Altman used Newman effectively in his spoof on American western folklore, Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976), and again in the controversial Quintet (1979), a futuristic saga set in an apocalyptic frozen wasteland. Newman also maintained his star status by appearing in such popular films as The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), and two films for which he received Oscar nominations, Absence of Malice (1981) and The Verdict (1982). Paul Newman as Eddie Felson in The Color of Money (1986). After six Academy Award nominations and one career achievement Oscar, the actor finally took home a best actor statuette for his work in director Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money (1986), the sequel to The Hustler. At the age of 70, he was nominated yet again for his depiction of an out-of-work construction worker in director Robert Benton's Nobody's Fool (1994). He also worked with Benton on the detective thriller Twilight (1998), proving himself cinema's most enduring leading man. Newman has occasionally directed films, often with his second wife, actress Joanne Woodward, in the lead. He also launched the successful Newman's Own line of food products in 1982, its profits going to a number of charitable causes. Additional reading Elena Oumano, Paul Newman (1996); Lawrence J. Quirk, The Films of Paul Newman (1997); Eric Lax, Paul Newman, a Celebration (1999).