Paul Newman

Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, filmmaker, racecar driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He has been described as "one of the last of the great 20th-century movie stars". He was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, seven Golden Globe Awards, an Actor Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Silver Bear for Best Actor, a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and nominations for two Grammy Awards and a Tony Award. Along with his Best Actor Academy Award win, Newman also received the Academy Honorary Award and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Born in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and raised in Shaker Heights, the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Newman showed an interest in theater as a child and at age 10 performed in a stage production of Saint George and the Dragon at the Cleveland Play House. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in drama and economics from Kenyon College in 1949. After touring with several summer stock companies including the Belfry Players, Newman attended the Yale School of Drama for a year before studying at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. His first starring Broadway role was in William Inge's Picnic in 1953 and his final was in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in 2003.

Newman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Color of Money (1986). His other Oscar-nominated performances were in

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Absence of Malice (1981), The Verdict (1982), Nobody's Fool (1994), and Road to Perdition (2002). He also starred in such films as Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), The Long, Hot Summer (1958), The Young Philadelphians (1959), Harper (1966), Torn Curtain (1966), Hombre (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), and Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981). He also voiced Doc Hudson in Cars (2006).

Paul Leonard Newman was born on January 26, 1925, in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and raised in nearby Shaker Heights. He was the second son of Theresa Garth (née Fetzer, Fetzko, or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková; 1894–1982) and Arthur Sigmund Newman Sr. (1893–1950), who ran a sporting goods store.

Newman's father was a son of Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, both Jewish emigrants from Hungary and Poland, respectively. Newman's mother was a practitioner of Christian Science. She was born into a Catholic family in Peticse, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and now part of Slovakia. Newman's mother worked in his father's store while raising Paul and his elder brother, Arthur.

He made his Broadway theatre debut in the original production of William Inge's Picnic with Kim Stanley in 1953. While working on the production, he met Joanne Woodward, an understudy. The two were married in 1958. He also appeared in the original Broadway production of The Desperate Hours in 1955. In 1959, he was in the original Broadway production of Sweet Bird of Youth with Geraldine Page and three years later starred with Page in the film version. During this time Newman started acting in television. His first credited role was in a 1952 episode of Tales of Tomorrow entitled "Ice from Space". In the mid-1950s, he appeared twice on CBS's Appointment with Adventure anthology series.

In February 1954, Newman appeared in a screen test with James Dean, directed by Gjon Mili, for East of Eden (1955). Newman was tested for the role of Aron Trask, Dean for the role of Aron's twin brother Cal. Dean won his part, but Newman lost out to Richard Davalos. That same year, as a last-minute replacement for Dean, he co-starred with Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra in a live color television broadcast of Our Town, which was a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's stage play. After Dean's death, Newman replaced Dean in the role of a boxer in a television adaptation of Hemingway's story "The Battler", written by A. E. Hotchner. It was broadcast live on October 18, 1955. That performance led to his breakthrough role as Rocky Graziano in the film Somebody Up There Likes Me in 1956. The Dean connection had additional resonance. Newman was cast as Billy the Kid in The Left Handed Gun, which was a role originally earmarked for Dean. Additionally, Dean was originally cast to play the role of Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me; however, with his death, Newman got the role.

Newman's first film for Hollywood was The Silver Chalice (1954), co-starring Italian actress Pier Angeli. The film was a box-office failure, and the actor would later acknowledge his disdain for it. In 1956, Newman garnered much attention and acclaim for the role of Rocky Graziano in Robert Wise's biographical film Somebody Up There Likes Me. That year, he also played the lead in Arnold Laven's The Rack. In 1957, Newman worked again with director Wise in Until They Sail. Also that year, he acted in Michael Curtiz's The Helen Morgan Story.

In 1958, Newman starred in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opposite Elizabeth Taylor. The film was a box-office smash, and Newman garnered his first Academy Award nomination. Also in 1958, Newman starred in The Long, Hot Summer with his future wife Joanne Woodward, with whom he reconnected on the set in 1957 (they had first met in 1953). He won Best Actor at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival for this film. He and Woodward had also appeared on screen earlier in 1958 in the Playhouse 90 television play The 80 Yard Run. The couple would go on to make a total of 16 films together.

In 1959, Newman starred in The Young Philadelphians, a film that also featured Barbara Rush, Robert Vaughn and Alexis Smith and was directed by Vincent Sherman. He also co-starred with Woodward in the film Rally Round the Flag, Boys!. In 1960, he starred in Exodus and co-starred with Woodward in From the Terrace.

Newman was married twice. His first marriage was to Jackie Witte from 1949 to 1958. They had a son, Scott (1950–1978) and two daughters, Susan (1953–2025) and Stephanie Kendall (born 1954). Scott, who appeared in films including The Towering Inferno (1974), Breakheart Pass (1975), and Fraternity Row (1977) died in November 1978 from a drug overdose. Newman started the Scott Newman Center for drug abuse prevention in memory of his son. Susan was a documentary filmmaker and philanthropist and had Broadway and screen credits, including a starring role as one of four Beatles fans in I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and also a small role opposite her father in Slap Shot and in A Wedding (1978). She also received a Golden Globe and Humanitas Award, plus Emmy, Peabody and Grammy Awards nominations, for her role as co-producer of Newman's 1980 telefilm The Shadow Box. She died on August 2, 2025 at the age of 72; her death was not made public until October 7, 2025.

Newman met actress Joanne Woodward in 1953, on the production of Picnic on Broadway. It was Newman's debut; Woodward was an understudy. Shortly after filming The Long, Hot Summer in 1957, he divorced Witte to marry Woodward. The Newmans moved to East 11th Street in Manhattan, before buying a home and raising their family in Westport, Connecticut. They were one of the first Hollywood movie star couples to choose to raise their families outside California. They remained married for 50 years until his death in 2008. Woodward has said "He's very good looking and very sexy and all of those things, but all of that goes out the window and what is finally left is, if you can make somebody laugh... And he sure does keep me laughing." Newman has attributed their relationship success to "some combination of lust and respect and patience. And determination."

With writer A. E. Hotchner, Newman founded Newman's Own, a line of food products intended to give all the profits away, in 1982. The brand started with salad dressing and has expanded to include pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, salsa, and pizza, among other things. Newman established a policy that all proceeds, after taxes, would be donated to charity. He co-wrote a memoir about the subject with Hotchner, Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good. Upon his death in 2008, he gifted the food company to Newman’s Own Foundation, which was made possible by the passage of the Philanthropic Enterprise Act of 2017.100% of the profits and royalties from the sale of Newman’s Own products go to the foundation in service of its mission: to nourish and transform the lives of children who face adversity.

Among other awards, Newman's Own 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 located in Ashford, Connecticut, which Newman co-founded in 1988. It is named after the gang in his film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and the real-life, historic Hole-in-the-Wall outlaw hangout in the mountains of northern Wyoming. Newman's college fraternity, Phi Kappa Tau, adopted his Connecticut Hole in the Wall camp as their "national philanthropy" in 1995. In 1988, Newman founded the SeriousFun Children's Network, a global family of summer camps and programs for children with serious illnesses. In 2006, Newman also co-founded Safe Water Network with John Whitehead, former chairman of Goldman Sachs, and Josh Weston, former chairman of ADP, to improve access to safe water to underserved communities around the world.

In 1983, Newman became a major donor for The Mirror Theater Ltd, alongside Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, matching a grant from Laurance Rockefeller. Newman was inspired to invest by his connection with Lee Strasberg, as Lee's then daughter-in-law Sabra Jones was the founder and producing artistic director of The Mirror. Paul Newman remained a friend of the company until his death and discussed at numerous times possible productions in which he could star with his wife, Joanne Woodward. In June 1999, Newman donated $250,000 to Catholic Relief Services to aid refugees in Kosovo.

On June 1, 2007, Kenyon College announced that Newman had donated $10 million to the school to establish a scholarship fund as part of the college's $230 million fund-raising campaign. Newman and Woodward were honorary co-chairs of a previous campaign.

Newman was a supporter of Eugene McCarthy's unsuccessful 1968 campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Newman was a McCarthy-pledged delegate from Connecticut. While Newman was a lifelong Democrat, he endorsed and voted for Independent candidate John B. Anderson in 1980, who was a liberal Republican, instead of the incumbent Democratic president, Jimmy Carter. For Newman's support of McCarthy's 1968 campaign, effective use of television commercials in California, and his opposition to the Vietnam War, Newman was placed nineteenth on Richard Nixon's enemies list, which Newman claimed was his greatest accomplishment. In 1960 he endorsed Gore Vidal's congressional run and in 1964, he and his wife, Joanne Woodward, supported Lyndon B. Johnson for president. During the 1968 presidential election, Newman supported Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey and appeared in a pre-election night telethon for him.

Newman attended the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, and was also present at the first Earth Day event in Manhattan on April 22, 1970. Newman was concerned about global warming and supported nuclear energy development as a solution. He was also described as a "vocal supporter" of gay rights and same-sex marriage.

Newman was linked to the "Malibu Mafia" to promote progressive issues in politics. This was a group of wealthy men in the Greater Los Angeles area who met to discuss politics. Backed by them, Newman and his wife went to Washington in 1976 to speak in favor of breaking up Big Oil into separate components. Newman supported their 1980s effort to establish a bilateral Nuclear Freeze to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the United States and the Soviet Union. He said he would stand up for Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election as long as there was cold Budweiser and Nuclear Freeze involved.

In January 1995, Newman was the chief investor of a group, including the writer E. L. Doctorow and the editor Victor Navasky, that bought the progressive periodical The Nation. Newman was an occasional writer for the publication. He endorsed Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election. He endorsed Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2004.

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 donated to Chris Dodd's presidential campaign. Newman earlier donated money to Bill Richardson's campaign for president in 2008.

Newman was an auto racing enthusiast and first became interested in motorsports ("the first thing that I ever found I had any grace in") while training at the Watkins Glen Racing School for the filming of Winning, a 1969 film. According to his instructor Bob Bondurant, it was because of his love and passion for racing, Newman agreed in 1971 to star in and to host television special Once Upon a Wheel, on the history of auto racing. Newman's first professional event as a racer was in 1972 at Thompson International Speedway, quietly entered as "P. L. Newman", by which he continued to be known in the racing community.

Newman was a frequent competitor in Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) events for the rest of the decade, eventually winning four national championships. He later drove in the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans in Dick Barbour's Porsche 935, finishing in second place. Newman reunited with Barbour in 2000 to compete in the Petit Le Mans.

From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, he drove for the Bob Sharp Racing team, racing mainly Datsuns (later rebranded as Nissans) in the Trans-Am Series. He became closely associated with the brand during the 1980s, even appearing in commercials for the brand in Japan and having a special edition of the Nissan Skyline named after him. At the age of 70 years and eight days, Newman became the oldest driver to date to be part of a winning team in a major sanctioned race, winning in his class at the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona. Among his last major races were the Baja 1000 in 2004 and the 24 Hours of Daytona once again in 2005.

During the 1976 auto racing season, Newman became interested in forming a professional auto racing team and contacted Bill Freeman, who introduced Newman to professional auto racing management, and their company specialized in Can-Am, Indy Cars, and other high-performance racing automobiles. The team was based in Santa Barbara, California, and commuted to Willow Springs International Motorsports Park for many of its testing sessions.

Their Newman Freeman Racing team was very competitive in the North American Can-Am series in its Budweiser-sponsored, Chevrolet-powered Spyder NFs. Newman and Freeman began a long and successful partnership with the Newman Freeman Racing team in the Can-Am series, which culminated in the Can-Am Team Championship trophy in 1979. Newman was associated with Freeman's established Porsche racing team, which enabled both Newman and Freeman to compete in SCCA and IMSA racing events together, including the Sebring 12-hour endurance sports car race. This car was sponsored by Beverly Porsche/Audi. Freeman was Sports Car Club of America's Southern Pacific National Champion during the Newman Freeman period. Later, Newman co-founded Newman/Haas Racing with Carl Haas, a Champ Car team, in 1983, going on to win eight drivers' championships under his ownership.

Newman was nominated for an Academy Award in five different decades. In addition to awards Newman won for specific roles, he received an honorary Academy Award in 1986 for his "many and memorable and compelling screen performances" and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his charity work in 1994.

In 1992, Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, were recipients of Kennedy Center Honors. In 1994, the couple received the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given annually by Jefferson Awards. Newman won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for The Long, Hot Summer and the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for Nobody's Fool.

In 1968, Newman was named Man of the Year by Harvard University's performance group, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. The 2008 edition of Sport Movies & TV – Milano International FICTS Fest was dedicated to his memory. In 2015, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 'forever stamp' commemorating Newman, which went on sale on September 18, 2015. It features a 1980 photograph of Newman by photographer Steve Schapiro, accompanied by text that reads: 'Actor/Philanthropist'.

Since the 1970s, Newman Day is an event celebrated at Bates College, Kenyon College, Princeton University, and some other American colleges. On Newman Day, students try to drink 24 beers in 24 hours, based on a quote attributed to Newman about there being 24 beers in a case, and 24 hours in a day, and that this is surely not a mere coincidence. In 2004, Newman requested that Princeton University dissociate the event from his name, due to the fact that he did not endorse the behavior. He cited his creation in 1980 of the Scott Newman Center, "dedicated to the prevention of substance abuse through education". Princeton disavowed any responsibility for the event, responding that Newman Day is not sponsored, endorsed, or encouraged by the university itself and is solely an unofficial event among students.

On October 26, 2017, Paul Newman's Rolex Daytona wristwatch was auctioned in New York by Phillips Auctions for $17.5 million, making it one of the most expensive wristwatches ever sold at an auction. On September 3, 2022, Lime Rock Park, a road course in Lakeville, Connecticut, named the straight of the circuit past the Esses before The Uphill the Paul Newman Straight during the Historic Festival 40.