Top Years of Paul Newman ( Poster Story )
In loving memory of Paul Newman (January 26, 1925 - September 26, 2008)
On Acting
“I’m basically an irresponsible person, and I wanted to find a way of life that allowed me to continue in my irresponsibility.If you’re lucky enough to do that, there’s a kind of genius in it. If you fail, of course, it’s disastrous.I’ve been lucky, but now it looks like some kind of grand design.”
“I was terrorised by the emotional requirements of being an actor. Acting is like letting your pants down; you’re exposed”
“I was lucky to survive my first film, The Silver Chalice. God, what a dog, the worst film of the ’50s.”
“I cannot bear to look at a film that I made before 1990. Maybe 1985. There’s no sense even trying to explain it. I really just can’t watch myself. I see all the machinery at work and it just drives me nuts, so I don’t look at anything.”
“I wasn’t driven to acting by any inner compulsion. I was running away from the sporting goods business.”
“Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experiences.”
“I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.”
“To be an actor, you have to be a child.”
“To that extent that you can sustain and maintain that childlike part of your personality is probably the best part of acting.”
“Every time I get a script it’s a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It’s like falling in love. You can’t give a reason why.”
Legendary film star Paul Newman dies at age 83
Paul Newman died of lung cancer on September 26, 2008 aged 83 at his long-time home in Westport, Connecticut. He was surrounded by his family and close friends, his publicist Jeff Sanderson said.
He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an Emmy award, along with many honorary awards.
In June 2008 it was widely reported that Newman, a former chain smoker, had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was receiving treatment at Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York City.Photographs taken of Newman in May and June showed him looking gaunt.
Newman was scheduled to make his professional directorial stage debut with the Westport Country Playhouse’s 2008 production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, but he stepped down on May 23, 2008, citing health issues.
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.”
Famed for his philanthropy as well as his acting, Newman was married to Oscar-winning actress Joanne Woodward for more than 50 years, and had successful side careers as an auto racing driver and creator of a line of food products, Newman’s Own, that bore his name and face on their labels.