RIP Paul Newman
Legendary actor Paul Newman, famed for playing antiheroes in movies like “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Sting” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” died Friday after a long battle with cancer. He was 83.
The Associated Press is reporting that Newman, who was known for his famously sparkling blue eyes, died at his home in Westport, Conn., surrounded by family and friends.
In May, Newman had dropped plans to direct a fall production of “Of Mice and Men,” citing unspecified health issues, according to AP.
The screen legend got his acting start in theater and TV in the 1950s and made his movie debut in the 1954 stinker “The Silver Chalice,” a movie so famously bad that Newman took out an ad in variety apologizing for his performance.
His breakthrough came the next year when James Dean, one of his classmates at the famed Actor’s Studio, died in a car crash. Newman inherited Dean’s role in a ”Playwrights ‘56″ TV adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s ”The Battler.”
Over five decades, he was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including eight times as best actor, once as best supporting actor, and once for best picture. His best picture nod came for helming 1968’s “Rachel, Rachel,” in which he directed his wife, Joanne Woodward. He and Woodward shared a rare lengthy Hollywood union; they were married for more than 50 years.
Newman worked with some of the top directors of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Martin Scorcese, Robert Altman, Sam Mendes, the Coen brothers and Pixar’s John Lasseter. His onscreen chemistry with Robert Redford on movies like “The Sting” and “Butch Cassidy” has become the stuff of film legend.
Newman also was famous for his love for and skill as a race car driver, his charity-funding salad dressing and food products company and his camps for children with cancers and other life-threatening diseases.
He also established the Scott Newman Foundation to fund the making of anti-drug films for children in honor of his son from his first marriage to Jacquelin Witte. Scott Newman died in 1978 of an accidental overdose of alcohol and Valium.
He is survived by his wife, five children (three daughters with Woodward and two daughters from his marriage to Witte), two grandsons and his older brother Arthur. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and legions of fans. The entertainment industry has lost a true star.
To read the AP obituary, click here.
To go to Newman’s IMDB page, click here.
And for a fun flashback, click here to read about Newman’s 1982 racing win at a Tulsa racetrack.
-BAM
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