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.'
|