♪♪ ♪♪ -You have any talent?

-For what?

-Acting, baby.

-With his physique of a Greek statue and his baby blue eyes... ...Paul Newman embodied the quintessential Hollywood superstar.

He seemed to have always been there.

Even his name resonated as a permanent fixture.

-Men look at him on the screen.

They would like to be him, and women would like to be with him.

Here's Paul Newman.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Throughout his five decades long career, he worked not only with classic Hollywood directors, but also with new Hollywood movie makers, gliding from memorable roles to blockbuster hits.

And yet, Newman never felt satisfied, for he was consumed by a secret, persistent worry.

Early on, he felt like an imposter.

For years, he would attribute his stardom to unsatisfying causes.

Even once he had become a star with major crowd appeal, it would still take years before he got what was, in his eyes, the only true valid recognition.

♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Dog barking ] -August 1965.

Malibu.

Actor Roddy McDowell took out his Super 8 camera to film a Sunday afternoon on the beach with a bunch of actor friends.

♪♪ ♪♪ Off to one side, Paul Newman was knocking back can after can of his favorite beer, all the while keeping an eye on his children splashing in the waves.

He was wrapping up the shooting of "Harper", a movie where he played an alcoholic detective.

He needed scant preparation for this part.

As he summed it up, "I just had to get drunk."

Newman took to drinking early on.

He said, "Alcohol allowed me to explore and unlock some things in my head."

By the age of 40, and at the top of his game, he was about to be a dad for the sixth time, and his popularity had made him Hollywood's most demanded actor.

Behind this radiant facade lie a hidden worry about the next step in his career, a career that had jettisoned him to stardom a mere six years earlier.

-About six years ago, when I was up at Yale, if anybody had told me that I would be costarring in a Tennessee Williams movie with Elizabeth Taylor, I would have told them that they were out of their ever-loving mind.

-It took but one movie for his acting career to soar.

-Elizabeth Taylor is Maggie the Cat, a girl too hungry for love to care how she goes about getting it.

Paul Newman vividly plays the emotionally tormented football hero.

-"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" was initially set to be shot in black and white, but in the end, director Richard Brooks insisted on color in order to focus on the two most beautiful pairs of eyes in all of Hollywood.

-Why are you looking at me like that?

-Like what, Maggie?

-Like you were just looking.

-The film snagged the first of his nine Oscar nominations, and the couple that he and Elizabeth Taylor created on screen became a lasting Hollywood legend.

-I thought we were looking pretty good back then.

[ Laughter ] -Hey, I think we're still looking pretty good.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Okay.

-With Paul Newman, yes, the eyes had it.

Hypnotic, baby blue eyes.

A magnetic gaze that directors capitalized on throughout his entire career.

♪♪ In his film "Torn Curtain", Alfred Hitchcock crafted a whole scene around the actor's face.

In this lengthy scene with no dialogue, Paul Newman strangles a spy with his bare hands and finishes him off in a gas oven.

[ Oven hissing ] The camera trucks in on Newman's eyes, as they flash with fear, then show panic, then steely, murderous determination.

-[ Grunts ] -The eyes that stirred audiences' curiosity were a burden for the actor himself.

-Sometimes, it's really marvelous, you know?

People come up and thank you for giving them some feeling in the theater, and that's really nice.

But the people who say, "Take off your dark glasses so I can see your blue eyes," you really feel like a piece of meat when that happens.

-Born in the mid-1920s of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, neighbors remarked that baby Paul was "beautiful, almost too beautiful for a boy."

He was more an object of admiration than affection for his mother.

His father, a stern merchant, saw him as a good for nothing bum, a failed hope for a successor to the family business.

-My relationship with my father was not very good, but that wasn't his fault.

I was a real space cadet.

I wasn't much of a scholar.

I wasn't interested in the kind of things that he thought was worthwhile.

There was nothing that I was doing that he could measure with affection.

-Early on, his mother's adulation and his father's scorn left Paul feeling like an imposter.

It gave him a thirst for recognition, and this nourished him in his first acting roles.

In the film "From the Terrace", he played a rebel son longing for his father's approval.

-You don't think I can make it on my own?

-You're not big enough to even walk in my shadow, and you never will be.

-He played a repressed homosexual unable to give his father an heir in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof".

-Look at me.

For the sake of God, look at me before it's too late.

For once in your life, look at me as I really am.

-My father died in 1950, which was before he could take another look at me, and that's... oh, a big loss in my life.

-I curse the...day you were born.

-The father-son conflict was a constant throughout his career, right up to his last movie, "Road to Perdition", directed by Sam Mendes.

-Natural law.

Sons are put on this earth to trouble their fathers.

-May I ask you, where do you come from?

A traditional show business family?

-No.

They were merchants in sporting goods.

-And did you act -- Did you feel that you have acting in your blood, or did it come entirely accidental?

-It was a series of accidents.

Well, for one thing, I was terribly interested in athletics when I was in college, and I was on the football team, and five of us went into town and we got involved in a brawl in a local beer joint, and we were kicked off the football team, and since I had nothing else to do with my free time, and I had a good deal of it, I started acting.

In college, I was actually working toward a master's degree.

I had no intention of being a professional actor.

I was going to teach directing at a small college, and I just got very lucky, that's all.

♪♪ -[ Clears throat ] -After being noticed by a talent scout, Newman set out to try his luck in New York City.

-Uh, the name of this play is called "Bang the Drum Slowly".

-His dashing good looks secured him bit parts on television.

While studying at the Actors Studio, director Elia Kazan described him as "frighteningly handsome".

Newman caused as much physical commotion as Marilyn Monroe did.

Kazan noted, "He aroused the women, and he created a lot of tension and competition among the men merely by showing up."

-I'll be honest, when you saw Paul Newman, he was this young guy on a stage, did you say, "That guy's got it"?

-Everybody said, "That guy's got it" the moment they looked at him.

-His role in the Broadway hit "Picnic" bolstered his desire to be an actor.

-I'd had a lot of offers to do films, and I had turned them all down, and I forget who it was, but someone says, "You know, they're going to knock so long and then they're going to stop knocking."

-Friends, now, I am very delighted to introduce to you a young gentleman who is one of the newer Hollywood stars, Mr. Paul Newman.

-His acting career was launched when Warner Bros. handed him an exclusive seven-year contract.

But in Hollywood, competition would be stiff.

Marlon Brando, also an Actors Studio alumnus, was already a huge star.

And when Newman was cast in his first movie, an epic dud where he looked stiff and gawky, the press nicknamed him "the poor man's Brando".

-Hail, artist.

-Why have I been arrested and then dressed like this?

-I played Basil the slave.

I certainly did, and complained relentlessly that -- oh, good Lord -- One of the characters got to wear a long evening dress, and I only had a short cocktail dress, and it was all bad.

-Reset.

-Newman also had to compete with James Dean, six years his junior, and whose soaring career at Warner Bros. was holding Newman's back.

However, a fatal car accident changed everything.

Newman was cast in a role initially offered to James Dean.

-You know, I've been lucky.

Somebody up there likes me.

[ Indistinct shouting ] -Hey, Romolo.

-Hey, Rocky boy.

When'd you get home, huh?

-I didn't get home.

I got out, that's all.

Come on.

-Hey, what about my other shoe?

-Eat it!

-Ever in the center of the screen and in constant movement, Newman was captivating.

The press continued to compare his acting to that of Brando, but now it was a compliment.

-Hey, Benny.

Hey.

It says here I'm a promising young middleweight.

How about that?

-Everybody who is young is promising.

[ Bell dings ] -Like Brando, Newman had been trained as a method actor.

-Come on, Rocky!

-You can do it.

-When I was asked to do Graziano, I studied with Graziano.

I mean, studied.

We almost lived together for three or four weeks, boxing, going around, seeing the south side of Manhattan, where he was born, the guys that he grew up with, all of that, and I tried very hard to put at least my version of Graziano on the screen.

-While on set, he would constantly nag directors about his character and would go so far as to demand script rewrites.

This garnered him the reputation of being a pain in the neck to work with.

-You're the judge.

-That'll do.

Take your belongings and get out before dark.

-I have heard you described by some people in Hollywood as a sort of rebel.

This true?

-Well, we live in what I call an age of conformity, where you have to travel with the herd, and if you don't travel with the herd, and if you don't say yes to that little man who's leading the pack, well, you're branded as a rebel.

I am trying desperately.

I hope, to be an individual.

-Displeased and frustrated with Warner Bros.'s choices, Newman took a gamble.

He bought back his contract for half a million dollars and became a freelance actor.

Heavily in debt now, he nevertheless agreed on lower pay for his next movie... ..."Exodus".

This Otto Preminger super production told the tale of the birth of the modern state of Israel through the odyssey of a group of Holocaust survivors led by Newman.

The role allowed him to proudly proclaim his Jewish heritage.

-Oh, I don't care about the Jews one way or the other, but they are troublemakers, aren't they?

-Do you mind looking into my eye, sir?

It feels like a cinder.

-Mm, certainly.

You know, a lot of them try to hide under Gentile names, but one look at that face, you just know.

-A little experience, you can even smell them out.

-I'm sorry, but I can't find a thing.

-It must have been my imagination.

Thanks.

-Hmm.

Well, good luck.

When he first started out in Hollywood, a producer suggested that he opt for a less Jewish-sounding name.

Newman categorically refused.

-I just wanted you to know that I'm a Jew.

This is my country.

-Acting in "Exodus" was political for Newman, but it was also the opportunity for him to pay homage to his father.

Plus, for the first time, he was playing a hero.

No longer a son following in his father's footsteps, but a full grown adult, he was free and master of his destiny.

-Beautiful.

-Ah.

I got the key now, baby.

I got the know-how.

That Hollywood merry-go-round is a pushover.

Today, they're stepping on your feet.

Tomorrow, they're kissing your feet I know.

I have seen it.

Well, that merry-go-round is going to carry me.

-Now that he had the magical power to attract crowds to movie theaters by his mere screen presence, how would he wield it?

-How should I play that one, Bert?

Play it safe?

-Times change.

The public's tastes, too.

Newman would use his success and his flair to play complex personalities and society's misfits.

These movies showcased his acting talent rather than his blue eyes.

[ Applause ] In Robert Rossen's "The Hustler", Newman played Fast Eddie Nelson, a cunning and ambitious pool shark who winds up involved with the Mafia.

-11 ball.

-You'll never walk into a big time pool hall again.

-To break with Hollywood conventions, Newman teamed up with Martin Ritt, a director who shared his vision of a cinema more in touch with reality.

Ritt said, "Every American motion picture should be a reflection of our American way of life, just as vital a motive in moviemaking as entertaining people and making money."

-[ Whistling ] -[ Cows mooing ] -In the tersely titled film "Hud", about a family of cattle ranchers forced to shoot their entire infected herd, Newman masterfully smashed his polished image.

He played a dissolute cowboy, a foul man whose brutality explodes in a rape scene.

-[ Grunting ] -Despite their gloom and lack of happy endings, both "The Hustler" and "Hud" captivated a new kind of audience, one that recognized itself in the anti-hero's individualism and cynicism.

-You got all that charm going for you, and it makes the youngsters want to be like you.

That's the shame of it, because you don't value nothing.

You don't respect nothing.

You keep no check on your appetites at all.

You live just for yourself, and that makes you not fit to live with.

-My mama loved me, but she died.

-These two movies won Newman two new Oscar nominations.

Gone was the poor man's Brando.

Gone was the James Dean surrogate.

Newman had made his mark.

Nevertheless, for his peers, none of this was enough.

In 1964, Sidney Poitier took the Oscar.

This did not upset Newman.

He admitted that he had planned to vote for Poitier, adding that it was high time for the Academy to recognize a black actor's talent.

[ Indistinct chanting ] Newman was a man of convictions.

He donated portions of his earnings to civil rights associations.

He joined Poitier and a swarm of other major Hollywood figures to the massive March on Washington, held several months earlier.

-You will recognize the stars Sidney Poitier, Burt Lancaster, Rita Moreno, Paul Newman.

-I have a family.

I certainly don't want them to figure that I was never a part of the times.

I mean, you can't give up your citizenship because you've got a Screen Actors Guild card.

-Newman was an engaged citizen his entire life, even though the press frequently failed to take his commitments seriously.

-Is he sexy?

-Well, I must admit, he is.

[ Chuckles ] Beautiful eyes.

-What about you?

-Oh.

I ditto about everything she said.

I really liked him.

-Do a song and dance!

[ Laughter ] -If you'd ever heard me sing or saw me dance, you wouldn't ask me to do that.

-He remained unwavering in his activism.

He opposed the Vietnam War, the nuclear arms race, stood up for environmental preservation and LGBT rights, sometimes with unanticipated outcomes.

-I think the proudest moment in my life -- when I was declared number 19 on Mr. Nixon's enemies list.

♪♪ ♪♪ -He went so far as to create his own brand of food products, the label emblazoned with his face.

Sales profits went to charity works.

He even turned down various roles that went against his convictions... -Paul!

-...such as "Dirty Harry".

Newman objected to the character's questionable practices, but submitted Clint Eastwood's name to the producers.

-Detective Harry Callahan.

You don't assign him... -Stop!

-...to murder cases.

You just...turn him loose.

-The Cinnamon Cinder is a teenager's nightclub just over the hills in North Hollywood, and here, the Beatles hold another press conference.

-What movie actor would you like to meet in Hollywood?

-Paul Newman.

-Paul Newman.

[ Laughter ] [ Indistinct shouting ] -In the 1960s, Newmanmania reached its height with the box office hit "Cool Hand Luke".

It instantly became a cult film.

♪♪ In it, Newman played a prisoner whose yearning for purity bordered on masochism.

-Stay down.

You're beat.

-You gonna have to kill me.

[ Indistinct chatter ] -The adulation fellow prisoners showed him echoed what Newman was experiencing off screen.

-Come on, come on, tell us.

-Stop feeding off me!

Get out of here!

Can't breathe.

Give me some air.

-With groupies hounding him, Newman quickly felt trapped.

-I was standing at a urinal and a guy came through the door with a pencil and a piece of paper in his hands, and I said, "Never again."

That is the terminal insult.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Fame became all the more cumbersome because it limited the types of roles he could play.

-This is a kind of a serious question, and it has to do with your good looks that they always talk about.

Has it ever hurt a role for you because you have a kind of likable face?

-Well, suffice it to say, is when I put on the putty nose, then the picture is an automatic failure.

-Have you done that?

-Yes.

Sure.

-What was that?

-Oh, "The Outrage", which I thought was a rather good film.

They want you to play a certain kind of character, and if you violate that impression, then they get angry.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Uh...

I seem to be stuck inside of an American skin, like it or not.

-A certain lassitude set in, which Newman drowned in excessive alcohol consumption, a type of self-destructive behavior that he shared with numerous characters he portrayed on screen.

[ Alarm clock ringing ] Certain that his success was founded on the wrong reasons, Newman felt that he still lacked what it took to be the kind of actor whose talent could outshine his beauty.

An opportunity allowed him to momentarily vanish from the screen and to take a new tangent.

-My name is Paul Newman, and I've got a secret.

[ Applause ] -In the 1950s, while still under contract to Warner Bros., Newman was leading a double life between his home in New York with his wife, Jackie, and their three children... -I'm a happily married man.

I have a happy home and a happy wife and two happy children.

I couldn't be happier.

I'm very happy indeed.

-...and Hollywood, where he was madly in love with actress Joanne Woodward.

When Woodward threatened to break up with him, Newman decided to divorce his wife.

He confessed years later, "I felt guilty as hell about leaving my first wife and children, and I'll carry this with me for the rest of my life."

♪♪ The two officially tied the knot in 1958, mere weeks before Woodward won an Oscar for Best Actress.

[ Camera shutters clicking ] -The Oscar,, awarded Joanne Woodward by her peers, for her performance in "Three Faces of Eve", and right beside it, a gag Oscar, an Oscar presented to Paul Newman by his colleagues for not having won an Academy nomination last year for "Somebody Up There Likes Me".

-Thus, with her Oscar in hand, the bride had upstaged the groom.

-Every time I get into an argument with Joanne about cooking or how to launder shirts, she just shakes her Oscar at me and I'm dead in the water.

-Born into a cultivated family, living on her own quite early in life, Woodward nevertheless chose to put her film career aside, returning to it whenever her husband's schedule allowed her to do so.

-I suppose, like a lot of women in my generation, I had babies because that's what you did.

You know, you got married and you had a baby.

We didn't think in terms of saying, "Now wait a minute, am I really equipped to raise children?

Do I know anything about children?

Do I like children?"

I mean, I didn't even like children at all.

I mean, I didn't -- and I was terrified of them, and I somehow thought that miraculously, when I had this child, I was going to immediately know what to do with it, and of course, you don't.

-10 years and three children later, Joanne Woodward purchased the rights to a novel with the firm intention of playing the main character.

-Hello?

-Mother, who is it?

-He says it's a Dr. Timothy Leary.

-Hello?

-Hello.

-Oh.

Oh, hello.

-Movie studios showed no interest in this story, about a teacher who, in her mid 30s, discovers her sex life.

-[ Chuckles ] They agreed to back the project once Woodward convinced Newman to direct the film.

In doing so, he could give a leg up to the woman who had sacrificed her own career in order to support his.

It was a first for him, and he was visibly at ease as a director, particularly in directing the actors, a perfectly natural extension of his own craft.

-Ah, Rachel.

Joanne's probably best work, I think.

Although I don't know.

She's so different.

I can never make up my mind about her.

And certainly my best work.

-Vacation hasn't started yet.

Don't push.

[ School bell rings, children cheering ] -Despite Newman's absence from the screen, this totally un-Hollywoodian, sensitive portrait of a woman attracted an audience.

-I don't know what is -- all this to complain about -- "How can you work with your husband?"

I just feel like if you say, "If you can't work with him, what do you live with him for?"

You know, it's very much simpler.

I would rather work with Paul than anybody.

-The film received two Golden Globe awards, one for Woodward and the other for Newman, recognition for his first try at directing.

Several years later, the couple dove into a new project together.

[ Music playing ] -Ruth, if you don't stop doing that, you're going to turn into butter.

When I went to that lousy school, it's the life of the party.

I made a great cheesecake, too.

-Beatrice, its main character, is trapped in her memories of unrealized dreams.

She makes her living by lodging dying people.

-♪ Hello, central, give me a line ♪ ♪ I want to talk to Jesus ♪ Hey, Nanny, you want to talk to Jesus?

♪♪ -The couple's second moviemaking experience proved to be quite trying.

-I was horrendous during that film.

I just didn't like it.

She was an ugly lady.

-She has only brought one character home with her after shooting, and that was Beatrice Hunsdorfer.

And I had a lot of meetings late at night in town because I had a lot of dinners elsewhere.

-Screened at the Cannes Film Festival, the film won Woodward top prize for acting.

-Thank you very much for this flower.

-This moviemaking experience marked them.

Newman himself wouldn't direct another movie for some 10 years, and yet, their marriage held fast.

It lasted over 50 years.

-Well, we must have enough in common down the pike somewhere.

We've had difficult times, like two people who are very different, but I guess the payoff must be a lot larger than the liabilities.

-I don't think anybody has a perfect marriage.

Paul and I -- I think he said it -- We both believe in recycling.

So, neither of us really believed in throwing a marriage away if it wasn't working, but to see if you couldn't work it out, to make it work, and so far, it's working.

[ Knocks on wood ] -In their thriftiness, their collective family work in the shooting, and their desire to explore marginalized characters floundering in the ditches of the American dream, the two films that Newman directed with Woodward echoed those of John Cassavetes, another actor who chose to work behind the camera, making movies with his wife, Gena Rowlands.

-[ Humming ] -This collaboration spotlighted Joanne Woodward's dual role as a pillar and a faithful advisor.

She unwaveringly stood beside her husband all throughout his career.

-Guns or knives?

-Neither.

-Pick.

-I don't want to shoot with you, Harvey.

-Anything you say, Butch.

-When Newman set out to look for a costar for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", an iconoclastic Western about two famous American bank robbers... -[ Clears throat ] Listen, I don't mean to be a sore loser, but, uh, when it's done, if I'm dead, kill him.

-Love to.

-...he chose an actor who had little name recognition at the time.

-That was Joanne's idea, and she read the script and she said, "It's marvelous, and the only guy that can play it is Bob Redford."

-The studio didn't want me in that film because I was not known.

They were trying to have a star comparable to Paul to be with.

-Hope they don't follow the horse.

-You're the brains, Butch.

You'll think of something.

-And they fought hard to really not do it with me.

And finally, it was Paul, and I will be forever indebted to him for that, because he said, "Come on, let's meet," and I met him and he said, "Okay, let's do it."

-Alright, I'll jump first.

-Nope.

-Then you jump first.

-No, I said.

-What's the matter with you?

-I can't swim!

-[ Laughs ] -The two actors instantly bonded, a significant boon for the shooting.

-Now, Bob and Paul consciously established a relationship that was excellent.

It included Redford's having to laugh at all of Newman's god awful jokes, and Newman had to put up with Redford showing up anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes late all the time.

-Whoooa!

Oh... -As Newman's alter ego, Robert Redford was a partner that he could pass the torch to.

This marked a turning point in Newman's career.

From now on, he would no longer be the young upcoming star.

Newman shared director George Roy Hill's vision of an artisanal moviemaking, where creativity and conviviality surpassed the business aspect.

These ideal work conditions pleased Newman and offered an ear for his ceaseless suggestions.

-Paul likes to say that the best film experiences are community experiences, and in this case, it was.

Bob and Paul, besides being an enormously skillful actors, are also very knowledgeable in all areas of filmmaking, and they made very real contributions, I'm sorry to say.

-Their camaraderie on the set contributed to the film's charm.

As a result, the film was a smash hit.

[ Horse whinnies ] -Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?

-A few years after, Newman, Redford, and Roy Hill joined up to do it all over again.

[ Train whistle blows ] The project this time was "The Sting", a heist film directed as a comedy.

-She picked him clean.

He never missed it.

-The dynamics of bromance worked brilliantly for this caper.

Redford shows off, all gussied up in fancy suits, while Newman, the mastermind, stands by impassively watching.

-Alright, everybody, FBI!

Don't anybody try to leave.

-Stand on your feet.

-Their chemistry worked again, and the film won 10 Oscar nominations, one of which was for Redford.

None, however, for Newman.

[ Indistinct shouting ] [ Gunshot, screaming ] -[ Screaming ] -Despite the friendship between the two actors, "The Sting" would be their last spree together.

Redford received a flood of offers for new roles, and Newman found a new activity that he would throw himself into heart and soul, leaving everything else behind.

[ Engines revving ] [ Brakes squealing ] In preparing for a role as a race car driver, Newman fell in love with this competitive sport of thrills and spills.

-What, you mean out there?

-Come on!

Move!

[ Engine starts ] -He discovered a world where appearances were insignificant.

What counted was the danger, mastery, and the roaring over the finish line to take first place.

-It's been a marvelous catharsis for me to get into something that isn't connected with the motion picture industry and see what's going on with a whole different bunch of people who do a lot of different things.

The cars themselves are a real kick in the rear.

-Joanne Woodward said, "The peace Paul used to find in being dead drunk he now finds in racing cars."

-You were serious once about racing, weren't you?

Or isn't it just something you've always wanted to do?

-I started racing in club races last year.

-Yeah.

-And I have to say that to win your first race at the age of 47 is delicious.

If I could race competitively, I would give up acting, directing, the theater, and motion pictures, so quickly.

-He's obsessed with racing.

He would get so boring talking about racing that sometimes, I just couldn't take it.

I found an old wrecked Porsche, 1964 Porsche that had been completely demolished, and so I had the thing wrapped up.

I bought it, I had it wrapped up, and delivered to his back door as a 50th birthday present.

[ Laughter ] -So, I had the whole thing compacted and left it his his vestibule.

Took five guys to carry this thing into his house.

-And so, I thought, "Okay, now I like that."

I thought that was really good.

So I didn't mention it to him.

[ Laughter ] -And of course, he finally won that one because he never admitted that anything was in his house.

-Wait a minute.

Hold it.

Well, you look terrific.

-So do you.

Except you got a little gray over the ears.

-It's the only difference.

Everything else works about the same.

-[ Chuckles ] -So?

-Like the character he played in the film "Harper", which he took up again in a forgettable sequel, Newman appeared radiant and serene in his 50s.

He had become aware of his limits as an actor and seemed to be at peace with that.

-I think acting was a good deal more exciting, you know, 20 years ago, mostly because I didn't feel, as a person, that I had exhausted any supply of characterizations, and now, 20 years later, you find that there are only so many different facets of your own personality that you can get to, and you find yourself repeating yourself.

So, I mean, there are actors like Olivier and Guinness who are extraordinary and who seem to have a limitless... -Their reservoir it goes -- -Incredible, and I don't seem to have that.

So, I'm not complaining or whining about it.

I'm just...

I recognize the fact that it exists.

-Alright, now... -He embraced his choices.

On one hand, bread and butter parts in over-the-top movies, like "The Towering Inferno", a disaster film that built him right up there beside Steve McQueen.

-And cut!

-On the other hand, accepting roles in iconoclastic movies in order to work under maverick directors like John Huston and Robert Altman.

Altman cast him as a show business Buffalo Bill, plying an odd, personal version of Wild West history.

[ Cheering ] Newman settled his score with his status as an American icon and with the Hollywoodish circus from which he had started to keep a safe distance.

-That's my star.

-He belongs to all of us, Nate.

-Our star.

-America's.

-The actor has to work.

I mean, if worked at really only the projects that I had a, you know, a total 100% commitment and enthusiasm for, I'd probably work once every three or four years.

♪♪ -When not making movies, Newman enjoyed life with his family in their Connecticut home.

Behind the happy and sunny facade of Super 8s, his relationship with his children from his first marriage remained fraught.

-On balance, was it a good idea being Paul Newman's daughter?

-If the choice had been mine, I don't know that I really would have chosen it.

-Really?

-It's nice.

You get wonderful education, you have certain elite status, but it has nothing to do with you, and you have a hard time differentiating what does have to do with you and what is being pushed off on you because you have a famous father.

It's very confusing.

-Upon learning that his eldest child, Scott, had a drug habit, Newman tried to lure him away from the addiction by getting him acting jobs in movies, in vain.

Scott died from an overdose.

Newman was devastated.

"I just realized that whatever I was doing in trying to be helpful was not being helpful at all.

In fact, it could have been harmful."

Newman didn't speak of his loss for quite a long time.

-See you later.

-But several years later, he directed a film that explored the tortured yet moving relationship between a father and his son.

-Nobody's perfect.

-The sink.

Bed was a mess.

Garbage all over.

-So?

Who's hurt?

-Who's hurt?

Who do you think?

Oh!

[ Door slams ] What's your name?

-Laura.

-Mine's Frank.

My God, you are some beautiful woman.

-In the early '80s, still with his legendary gaze, Newman wasn't the same man.

He appeared different in film, as if he had made a long journey home, and the fatigue from this voyage was seeping onto the screen.

-If we are to have faith in justice... ...we need only to believe in ourselves... ...and act with justice.

See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.

-Playing a washed up lawyer in "The Verdict", he appeared to have at last acquired the gravitas that he had lacked until then.

-It's a very interesting character for me to play because he's frightened, he's an alcoholic he's on the edge of things all the time, he's panicked.

He had reached a point and recognized that he had reached a point where he would either have to do something or not survive, and redemption is very interesting and irresistible.

It's a wonderful ingredient.

-Newman was initially hesitant to bare his soul.

Director Sidney Lumet would have to push him hard to wrench the desired performance out of him.

-We'd been in rehearsal for two weeks and we sat down afterwards.

I asked Paul to stay, and he said, "It's not working, is it?"

And I said, "Not quite, Paul."

And he said, "Well, what do you think's wrong?"

And I said, "Well, there's nothing that I can help you with here, Paul.

There's an element in this guy that you've got to let us see, and that means letting us see that element in you, a kind of despair and the kind of reasons that a person starts to drink," because the part was that of a guy who who was a drunk, and that loss of self -- that self-hatred, really, is what I'm talking about.

-This new performance seemed to be grounded in an entire life.

Past woes, challenges met, wrested successes, constrained pains, and frustrations.

-Bette Davis is the one who said it best.

She said, "Getting old ain't for sissies."

♪♪ -Have you reached a verdict?

-"The Verdict" garnered Newman his sixth Oscar nomination.

-We have, Your Honor.

-And for the sixth time, the award went to someone else.

However, his ceaseless labor had borne its fruit and graced him with unruffled self-confidence as an actor.

"It's just been a slow evolution.

I'm amazed at how available the emotion is.

I have to sit on it more than I have to really work to get at it."

At last, Newman was ready for one final baring of his soul.

-Better.

-Better?

Same?

Worse?

-Better.

-After one last focal adjustment, he could move beyond the star that he had been to reveal the actor that he had become.

To do so, he reprised one of his most memorable roles, Fast Eddie Felson in "The Hustler", shot some 25 years earlier.

-Game.

To direct the movie, Newman called upon Martin Scorsese, as he liked the man's work on "Raging Bull".

For the movie lover that Scorsese was, this was a dream come true.

He had been a fan of Newman since his teens.

He sent a long letter to the studios to convince them to finance a film that would solely focus on his actor's matured face.

-It's a story about a man who's about 52 or 53 years old and who, in a sense, changes his mind about the way he's been living.

Does he have the guts to go on?

Does he have the guts to actually play pool again?

It's about a fellow who realizes that his values have been upside down.

-Nothing much happens in the film.

Fast Eddie Nelson discovers a younger version of himself, played by Tom Cruise.

He decides to take him under his wing, then changes his mind and instead restarts his own career.

-Do you want it?

-No.

I can't.

This isn't for me.

I-I don't know who this is for.

This is, uh... -No, I think it had to do with the recognition that at some point, you turn the crown over to somebody else, and it's a difficult and painful transition to make.

The crown is an unfortunate choice.

The mantle, whatever you want to call it.

But the...um... You get sluggish and things don't work as well.

-And did you feel that Tom Cruise was the man to hand over to?

-Yes, very much so.

-[ Indistinct talking over PA ] -In the hypnotic tracking shot, Scorsese expressed the quintessence of what Newman had become -- a presence.

-[ Indistinct talking over PA ] -No longer gazed upon, but gazing out, Newman surveyed his surroundings as if trying to assess the distance between the world and himself.

-[ Indistinct talking over PA ] Lorenzo Kennedy will be playing, and we welcome back Fast Eddie Felson.

[ Applause ] -The winner is Paul Newman.

[ Cheers and applause ] -For "The Color of Money", Newman finally received official recognition from his peers.

He was 62 years old.

-I would like to congratulate Paul, who's not here tonight, and this award, Paul, is long overdue.

[ Applause ] -It's been a long time, and it's like chasing a beautiful woman for 80 years, and she finally says, "Well, here I am" And you say, "And so?

Now what?"

I guess I may have been competitive about acting at one point in my life.

I'm certainly not competitive anymore.

-For Newman, the time had come to step down.

He would only rarely return to moviemaking.

It was a gradual vanishing act, orchestrated like a long, slow curtain fall.

[ Applause ] He played the lead in a few more movies... ...then shuffled into cameo appearances, becoming increasingly ghostlike.

♪♪ His role as a Mafia godfather in Sam Mendes's "Road to Perdition" allowed him to take his gloomy last bow.

-I'm glad it's you.

-It was his last film appearance.

[ Gunfire ] -Well, I figure I've pretty much had more than I ever bargained for.

I mean, my aspirations as a young man did not encompass anything like this.

So, I could tune out tomorrow and feel that I've had a life that's probably richer and better and more fun and I had a certain kind of thickness that I would never have anticipated as a youngster.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪