Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as an activist, race car driver, popcorn impresario and the anti-hero of such films as Hud, Cool Hand Luke and The Color of Money, has died. He was 83.
Newman died on Friday, after a long battle with cancer, at his farmhouse near Westport, Connecticut, publicist Jeff Sanderson said. He was surrounded by his family and close friends.
In May, Newman dropped plans to direct a fall production of Of Mice and Men, citing unspecified health issues.
He got his start in theater and on television in the 1950s, and went on to become one of the world’s most enduring and popular film stars, a legend held in awe by his peers. He was nominated for Oscars 10 times, winning one regular award and two honorary ones, and had major roles in more than 50 motion pictures, including Exodus, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Verdict, The Sting and Absence of Malice.
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.
He sometimes teamed up with his wife and fellow Oscar winner, Joanne Woodward, with whom he had one of Hollywood’s rare long-term marriages.
“I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?” Newman told Playboy when asked if he was tempted to stray.
Newman had a soft spot for underdogs in real life, giving tens of millions to charities through his food company and setting up camps for severely ill children. Passionately opposed to the Vietnam War and in favor of civil rights, he was so famously liberal that he ended up on US president Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,” one of the actor’s proudest achievements, he liked to say.
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