Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, racing car driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur.

After touring with several summer stock companies including the Belfry Players, Newman attended the Yale School of Drama for a year before studying at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg.

His Oscar-nominated performances were in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Absence of Malice (1981), The Verdict (1982), Nobody's Fool (1994), and Road to Perdition (2002).

He also starred in such films as Harper (1966), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), and Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981).

At age 10, Newman performed at the Cleveland Play House in a production of Saint George and the Dragon, and acted in their Curtain Pullers children's theater program.

[20][21] In a 2011 interview, screenwriter Stewart Stern recounted that Newman drew on an incident from his Navy years as an "emotional trigger to express the character's trauma" when acting in the 1956 film The Rack.

That same year, as a last-minute replacement for Dean, he co-starred with Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra in a live, color television broadcast of Our Town, which was a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's stage play.

[40] In 1959, Newman starred in The Young Philadelphians, a film that co-starred Barbara Rush, Robert Vaughn and Alexis Smith, and was directed by Vincent Sherman.

[55] Also that year, he teamed up with fellow actor Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

[56] Finally that year, along with Barbra Streisand and Sidney Poitier, Newman formed First Artists Production Company so actors could secure properties and develop movie projects for themselves.

Five weeks after principal photography began, Colla left the project due to "artistic differences over photographic concept", as well as a required throat operation.

Also that year, Newman directed The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, the screen version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name.

There are moments when his face sags and his eyes seem terribly weary...[Newman] gives us old, bone-tired, hung-over, trembling (and heroic) Frank Galvin, and we buy it lock, stock and shot glass.

In 1986, twenty-five years after The Hustler, Newman reprised his role of "Fast Eddie" Felson in the Martin Scorsese-directed film The Color of Money,[88] for which he finally received the Academy Award for Best Actor.

[90] Also in 1987, Newman directed a screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie starring his wife, Joanne Woodward, John Malkovich, and Karen Allen.

[92] Variety called it "a reverent record" of the Williams play "one watches with a kind of distant dreaminess rather than an intense emotional involvement", and cited the "brilliant performances ... well defined by Newman's direction".

In 1994, Newman played alongside Tim Robbins as the character Sidney J. Mussburger in the Coen brothers comedy The Hudsucker Proxy, which received mixed reviews.

PBS and the cable network Showtime aired a taping of the production, and Newman was nominated for an Emmy Award[96] for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie.

Newman's last live-action movie appearance was as a conflicted mob boss in the Sam Mendes directed film Road to Perdition (2002) opposite Tom Hanks, Jude Law, and Stanley Tucci.

Although he continued to provide voice work for movies, Newman's last live-action appearance was in the 2005 HBO mini-series Empire Falls (based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Richard Russo), in which he played the dissolute father of the protagonist, Miles Roby, and for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.

[15] Scott, who appeared in films including The Towering Inferno (1974), Breakheart Pass (1975), and Fraternity Row (1977) died in November 1978 from a drug overdose.

[112] The docuseries was based upon tapes compiled by his friend, Stewart Stern, for a memoir that Newman abandoned but which was published in 2022 as The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Man.

"[120] Newman was scheduled to make his professional stage directing 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 his health concerns.

The brand started with salad dressing and has expanded to include pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, salsa, and wine, among other things.

It is named after the gang in his film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and the real-life, historic Hole-in-the-Wall outlaw hangout in the mountains of northern Wyoming.

[131] In 1983, Newman became a major donor for The Mirror Theater Ltd, alongside Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, matching a grant from Laurance Rockefeller.

Paul Newman remained a friend of the company until his death and discussed at numerous times possible productions in which he could star with his wife, Joanne Woodward.

[147][149] In January 1995, Newman was the chief investor of a group, including the writer E.L. Doctorow and the editor Victor Navasky, that bought the progressive-left wing periodical The Nation.

[158] He was a frequent competitor in Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) events for the rest of the decade, eventually winning four national championships.

Having said he would quit "when I embarrass myself", Newman competed into his 80s, winning at Lime Rock in what former co-driver Sam Posey called a "brutish Corvette", which displayed his age as its number: 81.