With a string of successful films behind him, all of them huge box office hits, Paul Newman has become so popular that few others can approach his fame.
He was born in Ohio in 1925 and though he worked in TV and theatre, he did not appear on film until 1954. In his films made in the 1950s, Newman established his screen personality as a charming loner. In films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Towering Inferno, he played characters who disagree with those in authority. Newman manages to combine success with privacy in a way other actors do not, and seems set to continue his popularity well into the future.
In 1953 Newman made his Broadway debut in William Inge’s Picnic. While working on the production, he met Joanne Woodward, an understudy. The two married in 1958 and became one of Hollywood’s most enduring couples. Newman’s performance in Picnic led to a film contract with Warner Brothers, and in 1954 he made his first feature, the widely panned The Silver Chalice, which the actor claimed was the worst movie made in the 1950s. Despite his inauspicious film debut, Newman was earning positive reviews for his work in live television dramas, notably Our Town (1955) and Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), which aired on Producers’ Showcase and The United States Steel Hour, respectively. In addition, he continued to act on the stage.
Classically handsome—with piercing blue eyes—and possessing a natural magnetism, Newman was soon offered another screen role. In 1956 he starred in Robert Wise’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, and his impressive portrayal of boxer Rocky Graziano secured his future in films. A string of acclaimed performances in notable dramas soon followed. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) was a highly praised adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play that also starred Elizabeth Taylor and Burl Ives; for his performance as a self-destructive former football player who is at odds with his father, Newman earned his first Academy Award nomination. The Long, Hot Summer (1958), which was based on short stories by William Faulkner, was the first of 10 feature films in which he would costar with Woodward. The drama centres on a drifter who becomes entangled with a wealthy family. In the biopic The Left Handed Gun (1958), Newman appeared as Billy the Kid. He closed out the decade with the melodrama The Young Philadelphians (1959), in which he played a manipulative attorney.
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