To the public, Hollywood legend Paul Newman was Cool Hand Luke, the mastermind in The Sting, and the "sexiest man alive".
Now, a new posthumous autobiography - Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man - reveals the late actor was never comfortable with his good looks or the way his story was told.
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward Photo: AFP
Paul Newman's daughter Melissa tells Jesse Mulligan about the conflicted father she knew and the regular guy he wanted the world to see.
Listen to Quentin Johnson's review of The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man by Paul Newman (Nine to Noon)
In the damp basement of the home Paul Newman shared with his wife of 50 years, Joanne Woodward, the transcript of an abandoned memoir project lay locked away and forgotten for years.
Over thousands of pages, the transcript captured many long conversations in which the famous actor opened up to his close friend Stewart Stern, a Hollywood screenwriter.
Melissa Newman found it interesting to learn from the transcript that her father's mother seemed to objectify him because he was beautiful.
"I feel like Stewart in a way objectified him [too] because he would imbue him with these deep, artistic and intellectual attributes.”
Paul, she sensed, would have pushed back against this characterisation.
“I think it's really natural for someone in that position to struggle, he always said that his epitaph would read ‘Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown’.”
Fame didn’t rest easily with her father, Melissa says.
“I think my mother was born really wanting to be a movie star, we always say she came out of the womb wearing tap shoes.
“But I think my father… there are some actors that just think about being an actor, and this, being thrust into the spotlight, I think he really just wanted to be a character actor.”
Paul's conversations with Stewart Stern reveal an artist struggling to find his voice, she says.
“[The transcript is] an incredible gift, but again I'm sorry that he didn't share this with us sooner, right after he did it because, as an artist, I think we could have had really amazing discussions about what it means to find yourself as an artist.
"I think all artists struggle with that. Anyone who's an artist knows what that's like.”
Photo: penguinrandomhouse.com
The Newman family was close, Melissa says.
“I had the blessing of living next door to [Paul and Joanne] because my husband and I bought the house that they bought in 1951, the year I was born.
“We moved into that house, we bought it from them when our son was two, he's now 26, so we were their neighbours, raising children for the last 12 years of his life together we literally had a river with a footbridge across it.
“And I call it the 12 years of babies and barbecues. And it was just... if you think about him evolving as a parent and then into an incredible grandparent, both my parents, I mean it was just blissful.”
Paul’s looks were his ticket to fame but also a curse, Melissa says.
“Women would come up and look at my mother and say 'Can I kiss him?' And I give her credit for not, you know, hauling off. But she was from the south, so she was more gracious.
“It goes back to the epitaph, he wanted to be recognised for his work. And he was cursed. He was cursed with incredible beauty. What can you say?”
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward had a long marriage and a love affair that never faded, she says.
“I think [that’s] one of the great revelations of the book for me, I always loved their relationship, they always had a very sweet passion with each other.
“I laugh because they had two doors on their bedroom. And I live in a house that I grew up in, so there were two doors to their bedroom and one of them had a bolt on it.
“And I used to think when I was little why would anybody ever need two doors to their bedroom?"
Robert Redford and Paul Newman in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Photo: 20TH CENTURY FOX
Another of Paul's great partnerships was his professional one with fellow actor Robert Redford, she says.
“George Roy Hill, the director, said it's very hard for two people who are such huge stars to form a deep friendship. I don't know if that's true or not, but I just know that the one big difference they had … my dad was notoriously on time and Robert Redford had a very loose relationship with a wristwatch.
“And my Dad would find that frustrating. But at the same time, I think [they were] sort of like brothers, they spent the last 10 years of his life looking for a project to do together.”
Newman reveals in the conversations on which the book is based, that he never rated his parenting skills, but Melissa begs to differ.
“When people asked me ‘What was your father like?’ I always looked at them and said ‘What was your father like? They're human beings and children don't come with an instruction manual.
“But I will I will leave you with this, to my great happiness, he looked at me once and he said to my husband and I, you broke the cycle of bad parenting.”
