"Joanne gave him his confidence," says Ethan Hawke in The Last Movie Stars (2022). "Joanne taught him to believe in himself. Joanne taught him to love himself. When somebody asks her why their marriage worked, she said, 'There's my ego, and there's his ego, and there's our ego. And when we're both in service of our ego, we can do anything.'" "Their relationship never stopped growing," said their daughter Clea. "Their art never stopped growing. They never stopped pushing themselves, finding new things that were interesting to them." Paul Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports car racing while Joanne Woodward teached theater classes. And together they were exceedingly generous philanthropists. According to Clea, they gave away "between $700,000,000 and a billion dollars. I don't really know. It's a lot. And the funny thing is, is that they probably wouldn't want anybody to know."
Hawke says, "I feel like we all need heroes that show the end of our life as a possibility of being the best part of our life." What Hawke is getting at in this documentary isn’t how to act but how to live as a Hollywood actor—how to remain artistically substantial and socially responsible, and how to sustain family relationships and friendships, all the while taking part in the machine and existing relentlessly in the public eye. For this, as the documentary reveals, there is no method. "I'm running out of steam," Newman said in 1968. "Wherever I look, I find parts reminiscent of Cool Hand Luke or Hud or Fast Eddie. Christ, I played those parts more than once. It's not only dangerous to repeat yourself, it's damned tiresome."
Besides, he had discovered racing and turned pro in 1977. He was fifty-two years old, and acting was now something he did on the side. Being a car racer he could use it to become the actor he'd always wanted to be, free of all the smirking boyo stuff and freeze-framed machismo. If he ain't Hud, ain't Fast Eddie, ain't Cool Hand Luke, ain't Butch Cassidy, who is he? Who is Paul Newman? "I don't know," he says. "You can't not absorb some of those character traits. You try to separate those little fragments you've created. The toughest role is playing Paul Newman. My own personality is so vapid and bland, I have to go steal the personalities of other people to be effective."
Nominated eight times for Academy Awards in the best-actor category, Newman won only once, for "The Color of Money" (1986), in which he reprised the role of "Fast" Eddie Felson that he originated in 1961's "The Hustler." When Newman finally won an Oscar in 1986 for "The Color of Money," it was neither his nor director Martin Scorsese's best effort and was seen by some observers as compensation for having been overlooked in "The Hustler." However, Newman didn't hide his disappointment that filmmaking in Hollywood had abandoned the "theater of the mind" for the "theater of the senses."
A new book, “Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man,” will be published in October. Ben Brusey, publishing director, bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Suzanne Smith, vice-president and director of foreign rights at Knopf Doubleday, for publication on 27th October. Knopf will simultaneously publish in the US. The publisher describes The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man as the “insightful, revealing and surprising memoir of perhaps the greatest movie star of the past 75 years”. Its synopsis reads: “Before he died in 2008, Newman had been at work on this project for five years. Newman recounts in detail his often traumatic childhood, his teenage insecurities, his youthful failures with women, his rise to stardom, his early rivals – Marlon Brando and James Dean – his first marriage, his greatest film roles, his drinking, his philanthropy, his professional racing car career, the death of his son Scott, and his desire for his daughters to understand the truth about their father.
“Perhaps the most moving material in the book centres on Newman’s relationship with Joanne Woodward and their deep love for each other. Additional voices that run throughout the book include Newman’s childhood friends, Navy buddies, family members and film and theater collaborators. The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man provides a new understanding of a man many admired but few really knew – from the perspective of the man himself. Newman died of lung cancer in 2008 at the age of eighty-three. Out of all his achievements, he valued his charity work the most. In his later years, Newman said: “I’d like to be remembered as a guy who tried to be a part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, and tried to extend himself as a human being.” That vision and his efforts toward it resonate today, through his legacy, carried on by his daughters and their respective philanthropy and activism. And through Joanne, his partner in this work, with whom he completed fifty years of marriage before his death. On their fiftieth wedding anniversary, Paul Newman asserted: “Joanne, being married to you has been the joy of my life.” Source: www.thebookseller.com
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