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Versatile Rebel Had Big Heart, Cool Hand

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By ADAM BERNSTEIN

The Washington Post

Published: September 28, 2008

Updated: 09/28/2008 01:11 am

Paul Newman, the actor and sex symbol who surged to stardom by playing loners as well as criminal and moral outlaws - anything to downplay his astonishing looks - died of cancer Friday at his farmhouse near Westport, Conn. He was 83.

Newman was an Academy Award-winning actor and acclaimed director, and he used his fame to propel his political activism, race car driving and philanthropy. He donated all the profits from his Newman's Own food company - more than $150 million - to charities and social welfare organizations.

Brooding and sinewy, with luminous blue eyes and a husky voice, Newman resembled a preppy Greek God in his earliest screen roles. He quickly rebelled against conventional casting that tried to turn him into a pretty-boy alternative to Marlon Brando and James Dean. He became known as an introspective and nonconformist performer - a perfect anti-hero idol for the socially rebellious 1960s and '70s.

In many of Newman's best films - "The Hustler," "Hud," "Harper," "Cool Hand Luke," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Sting," "Slap Shot," "The Verdict," "Nobody's Fool" and "The Color of Money" (for which he won an Oscar) - he played amoral rats, genial louts, self-destructive idealists, drunkards and has-beens. Some of his characters redeem themselves by being defeated or killed, and others just continue bumming along.

Newman hated to see his characters triumph on charm alone. No one, he said, would pay money to see such a beautiful man win the woman and save the day.

Off-screen, he mocked his sex-symbol status and said that his personality was closest to the vulgar, second-rate hockey coach he played in "Slap Shot" (1977).

His approach likely saved his career as he matured into a disciplined performer, one of the most enduring and polished of screen stars.

At a peak of his fame, he gambled on directing small-budget films that often showcased his second wife, actress Joanne Woodward. Their film "Rachel, Rachel" (1968), with Woodward as an aging, virginal schoolteacher, was an unexpected hit.

Newman worked with some of the greatest directors of the past half century, from Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston to Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and the Coen brothers. His co-stars included Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and, most famously, Robert Redford, his sidekick in "Butch Cassidy" and "The Sting."

Newman also starred in several critical and commercial duds, including his debut as a Greek slave in "The Silver Chalice" (1954).

Persistently overlooked by the Academy Awards despite 10 total nominations, Newman won relatively late in his career: for best actor in "The Color of Money" (1986) as aging pool shark Fast Eddie Felson, who is equal parts mentor to and manipulator of the character played by Tom Cruise. Newman reprised the role of Felson from "The Hustler" (1961).

Newman also received the 1986 honorary Oscar in part for "his personal integrity and dedication to his craft" and the 1994 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his philanthropic work.

His insight into character motivation was one of his finest traits. To play the self-destructive detective in "Harper," he said he "simply got drunk" as he read the script.

By the late 1960s, he began to feel like he was duplicating himself as an actor. He tried producing films in a short-lived partnership with Barbra Streisand and Sidney Poitier, but directing proved more his forte.

For his debut, he chose "Rachel, Rachel" and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for directing.

Reviewers praised his clean, lucid style and technical skill, and he directed Woodward again in movie or TV versions of several Pulitzer Prize-winning plays.

Newman and Woodward married in 1958, and they did 15 movies and television projects together. She survives him, along with their three daughters and two daughters from his first marriage.

He shunned Hollywood for an 18th-century farmhouse in Westport, Conn., with an apple orchard and pool.

Newman discovered auto racing while acting in the race-track film "Winning" (1969).

In 1976, he won his first national amateur championship, and the next year began racing with professionals. In 1979, he and two co-drivers finished second in the Le Mans 24-hour road race. He continued participating in pro races in the 1980s and 1990s.

Newman also made forays into politics and liberal causes. He volunteered extensively in 1968 for Sen. Eugene McCarthy and protested the Vietnam War at the U.S. Embassy in London.

By the early 1980s, Newman made a decision to refocus his acting career after years of bloated disaster films and other undistinguished projects. Among the best films were the police story "Fort Apache, the Bronx" (1981) and the courtroom drama "The Verdict" (1982); he played deeply flawed heavy drinkers in both films.

In honor of Scott, a son from his first marriage who was a budding actor who died in 1978 of an overdose of alcohol and Valium, Newman in 1988 organized a camp in Connecticut for children with life-threatening illnesses.

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