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| Birth Name(s) : Paul Leonard Newman |
Date of Birth: January 26, 1925 |
| Status:
Married
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Partner:
Joanne Woodward |
| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Paul Newman Biography
Screen legend, super star, and the man with the most famous blue eyes in movie history, Paul Newman was born in 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a successful sporting goods store owner. He acted in grade school and high school plays and after being disharged from the navy in 1946 he enrolled at Kenyon College. After graduation he spent a year at the Yale Drama School and then headed to New York where he attended the famed New York Actors Studio. Classically handsome and with a super abundance of sex appeal, television parts came easily to Paul and after his first broadway appearance in Picnic (1953) he was offered a film contract by Warner Brothers.
A caring and supremely generous man, he is the founder of "Newman's Own" a successful line of food products that has earned in excess of $100 million, every penny of which the philanthropic movie icon has donated to charity. Renowned for his sense of humor, in 1998 he quipped that he was a little embarrassed to see his salad dressing grossing more than his movies. |
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Additional Paul Newman Biography
Paul Leonard Newman (born January 26, 1925) is an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Cannes Award, and Emmy Award-winning American method actor and film director.
Newman served in the Navy in World War II in the Pacific theater. He flew from aircraft carriers as a rear gunner in the Avenger torpedo bomber. He had wanted to be a pilot, but did not qualify because he was color blind.
Newman appeared in a screen test with James Dean for East of Eden (1955). Newman was testing for the role of Aron Trask, Dean was testing for the role of Aron's older brother Cal Trask (although Newman is older than Dean). Dean won the part of Cal, while the role Newman was up for went to Dick Davalos.
He also appeared with his wife, Joanne Woodward, in the feature films The Long, Hot Summer (1958), Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!, (1958), From the Terrace (1960), Paris Blues (1961), A New Kind of Love (1963), Winning (1969), WUSA (1970), The Drowning Pool (1975), Harry & Son (1984) and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990). They also both starred in the HBO miniseries Empire Falls, but did not have any scenes together.
Best Actor
- Nominated: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
- Won: The Hustler (1961)
- Nominated: Hud (1963)
- Nominated: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1970)
Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
- Nominated: The Hustler (1962)
- Nominated: Sweet Bird of Youth (1963)
- Nominated: Hud (1964)
- Nominated: Cool Hand Luke (1968)
- Nominated: The Verdict (1983)
- Nominated: The Color of Money (1987)
- Nominated: Nobody's Fool (1995)
Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
- Nominated: Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1963)
- Nominated: Road to Perdition (2003)
Detached from Hollywood, Newman makes his home in Westport, Connecticut with his wife Joanne Woodward.
Newman married Joanne Woodward on January 29, 1958. They have three daughters — Elinor Teresa (1959), Melissa Steward (1961), and Claire "Clea" Olivia (1965). Newman directed his daughter Elinor (stage name Nell Potts) in the central role alongside her mother in the film The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. Newman has been married to Woodward now for almost 50 years. When asked why he never committed adultery by Empire magazine, he famously replied "Why go out for a hamburger when you have steak at home?"
Consistent with his work for liberal causes, Newman publicly supported Ned Lamont's candidacy in the 2006 Connecticut Democratic Primary against Senator Joe Lieberman, and was even rumored as a candidate himself until Lamont emerged as a credible alternative. He has donated to Chris Dodd's presidential campaign.
He first became interested in motorsports ("the first thing that I ever found I had any grace in") while training for and filming Winning, a 1969 film.
Newman's first professional event was in 1972, in Thompson, Connecticut. He ran the 24 hours of Le Mans once in 1979 and finished second in a Porsche 935 of Dick Barbour.
From the mid seventies to the early nineties, he drove for the Bob Sharp Racing team, racing mainly Nissans. He became heavily associated with the brand during the eighties, even appearing in commercials for them. Although they named a Skyline model after him, calling it the "Newman", he was most closely associated with the Z series, which he used for most of his race victories and championship titles.
Newman co-founded Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing with Carl Haas, a Champ Car auto racing team, in 1983. He is also a partner in the Champ Car Atlantics team Newman-Wachs racing. The 1996 racing season was chronicled in the IMAX film Super Speedway, which Newman narrates. His team Newman/Haas/Lanigan announced a partnership with Robert Yates Racing of the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series, but that partnership collapsed when Yates announced his retirement from racing in September 2007.
With writer A.E. Hotchner, Newman founded Newman's Own, a line of food products, in 1982. The brand started with salad dressing, and has expanded to include pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, and salsa, among other things. Newman donates the proceeds, after taxes, to charity. As of early 2006, the franchise has resulted in excess of $200 million in donations. He co-wrote a memoir about the subject with Hotchner, Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good (ISBN 0-385-50802-6). Among other awards, Newman co-sponsors the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award, a $25,000 reward designed to recognize those who protect the first amendment as it applies to the written word.
One beneficiary of his philanthropy is the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a residential summer camp for seriously ill children, which is located in Ashford, Connecticut. Newman cofounded the camp in 1986; it was named after the gang in his film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Newman's college fraternity, Phi Kappa Tau, adopted "Hole in the Wall" as their "national philanthropy" in 1995. One camp has expanded to become several Hole in the Wall Camps in the U.S., Ireland, France and Israel. The camp serves 13,000 children every year, free of charge.
In October 2007, he made a donation of £20,000 to help breast cancer patients in south west Wales through his Newman's Own Foundation.
The Scottish rock band Dogs Die In Hot Cars wrote a song entitled "Paul Newman's Eyes" on their first album Please Describe Yourself - a ballad to his infamous blue-eyed gaze. |
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Paul Newman Quote(s)
| On philanthropy: "You can only put away so much stuff in your closet". |
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