Famous actors : Paul Newman, Elizabeth Tailor
Newman, actor, director, and racing
driver, was born so good looking that people said it was а shame to waste such
beauty on, boy. He was born in
Cleveland, 0hio, in 1925, and did some
acting in high school and college, but never seriously
considered making it his future career.
However, after graduating, he
immediately started working in the theater. He met his first wife, Jackie
Witte, while they were acting together, and they got married in 1949. They had
three children, a boy and two girls He
found work in the theater and on several TV shows in New York. When he was
thirty, he went to Los Angeles and made his first film. It was what Newman called an 'uncomfortable' start in the
movies, in the role of a Greek slave. The experience was so bad that he went
back to the theater and didn't accept another film role for two years. The film he chose was his big break. He
played the boxer, Rocky Graziano, in the film Someone up There Likes Me. Newman
is a method actor who believes in living the part before beginning the film He
spent days - from morning till night - with Graziano. He studied the fighter's
speech and watched him box, and they talked endlessly about Graziano's
childhood. The picture brought Newman stardom overnight. He was living in Los
Angeles away from his family when he met Joanne Woodward, an actress who he had
first met in New York. They worked together in The Long Hot Summer. His wife,
Jackie, and Paul recognized that their marriage wasn't working, and got
divorced. Newman and Miss Woodward were married in Las Vegas in 1958. Newman
went on to make films such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and Towering Inferno. He has made over forty-five
films, and has won many awards, but he has never won an Oscar. His marriage to
Woodward is one of the longest and strongest in Hollywood. They have three
daughters, and they have co-starred in six films. Ever since the film Winning,
Newman has been passionately interested in car racing, and in 1979 he came
second in the twenty-four hour Le Mans race. But the end of the 1970s was not
all good news for him. In 1978 his only son, Scott, died of a drug overdose,
and as a result Newman created the Scott Newman Foundation to inform young
people on drug abuse. He has a strong social conscience, and has supported
causes such as the anti-nuclear movement, the environment, and driver
education. All the money from 'Newman's Own' salad dressing, popcorn, and
spaghetti sauce, now a multi-million dollar business, goes to charity. He is
more than just a movie star. would like
to be remembered as a man who has tried to help people to communicate with each
other,' says Newman, 'and who has tried to do something good with his life. You
have to keep trying. Thafs the most important thing.'
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