In a career spanning more than thirty years, he has composed music for nearly 100 feature films, as well as the 1997 and 1998 versions of the 20th Century Fox fanfare.
From the late 1970s until the early 1980s he played violin on most of John Williams' L.A. scoring sessions, and credits him for learning much about film-music composition.
This was his first collaboration with DeVito, and he went on to score nearly all of his subsequent films, including The War of the Roses (1989), Other People's Money (1991), Hoffa (1992), Matilda (1996) and Death to Smoochy (2002).
Newman has also scored the comedies The Flintstones (1994), The Mighty Ducks (1992), The Nutty Professor (1996), Paradise (1991), and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989).
In 1997, Newman began a four-year stint as the music director for the Sundance Institute, and he has conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra on several occasions.