50 Fun Facts About Paul Newman

Paul Newman said his greatest accomplishment was being named on which US president's list of political enemies?

Richard Nixon's list had Newman at number nineteen for backing an anti-war candidate in 1968 and opposing the Vietnam War. The actor treated his place on it as a badge of honour.

In Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman's prisoner wins a bet by eating fifty of which food in an hour?

Hard-boiled eggs make the film's best-known scene, and the feat turns Luke into a hero to his fellow inmates. The chain-gang drama brought Newman a Best Actor nomination.

Paul Newman won his only competitive Oscar in The Color of Money for reprising which pool-playing character?

Fast Eddie Felson first appeared in The Hustler in 1961, a role that brought Newman an Oscar nomination. He won 25 years later for playing the same man, now older and running a younger player.

Which homemade product, first given to friends as gifts, launched Paul Newman's food company Newman's Own in 1982?

Salad dressing was something Newman and a writer friend mixed themselves. It went down so well that each man put up $20,000 to sell it in shops, and sauces and snacks followed.

Which character did racing enthusiast Paul Newman voice in the 2006 Pixar film Cars, his last major movie?

Doc Hudson is a retired race car, a neat fit for an actor who spent decades racing for real. It was Newman's only role in an animated film.

Which actor played the Sundance Kid opposite Paul Newman's Butch Cassidy in the 1969 western about two outlaws?

Robert Redford took the part after bigger names passed on it, and the pairing clicked so well that the two reunited four years later for a hit caper film.

Which actress, an Oscar winner herself, was married to Paul Newman for 50 years and made 16 films with him?

Joanne Woodward met Newman in 1953, when both were working on the same Broadway play, and married him in 1958. He went on to direct her in several films.

Which star was originally cast in Somebody Up There Likes Me, the role that became Paul Newman's breakthrough?

James Dean was due to play the lead but died before filming began. Newman, who had once screen-tested alongside him for East of Eden, took over the part and became a star.

Paul Newman performed his own tricks on which vehicle for a playful scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

A bicycle was meant to be ridden by a stuntman, but the director disliked that footage, so Newman did the tricks himself. He also said the film's musical interlude was partly his idea.

Paul Newman, often described as classically handsome, was especially famous for which piercing facial feature?

Blue eyes were central to the magnetism that brought Newman film offers soon after his Broadway debut. One leading critic counted them among the reasons his prison drama worked.

Which young star played Vincent, the cocky pool prodigy mentored by Paul Newman's character in The Color of Money?

Tom Cruise performed most of his own pool shots for the part, though one especially tricky shot was played for him by a professional. Newman took the Oscar for the film.

Which director made The Color of Money, the sequel that finally brought Paul Newman a Best Actor Oscar?

Martin Scorsese took the job after Newman phoned him in 1984 to ask whether he would direct a follow-up to The Hustler. He shot the whole film in 49 days.

In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Paul Newman's outlaw flees a posse to which South American country?

Bolivia is where the outlaws and schoolteacher Etta Place run, with Butch picturing it as a robber's paradise. The film ends there, with the two men cornered by soldiers.

What did Paul Newman found in 1988, naming it after the Hole in the Wall Gang of his Butch Cassidy film?

A camp for sick children, it offers seriously ill youngsters summer sessions free of charge. It grew into a worldwide network of similar sites.

In the 1974 disaster film The Towering Inferno, what is the profession of Paul Newman's character, Doug Roberts?

Architect Doug Roberts designed the skyscraper that catches fire on the night of its dedication, so he knows what has gone wrong. Newman insisted on doing his own stunts.

Which star shared top billing with Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno, thanks to diagonally arranged credits?

Steve McQueen's name sat lower left and Newman's upper right, so each man appeared to come first depending on how the credits were read. Both had demanded the top spot.

Paul Newman's final live-action film role was a mob boss opposite Tom Hanks in which 2002 crime drama?

Road to Perdition brought Newman his last Oscar nomination, this time as a supporting actor. He had been the film-makers' unanimous first choice to play the Irish crime lord.

Which actress played Maggie opposite Paul Newman in the 1958 film of the stage hit Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Elizabeth Taylor took the role of Maggie in a film that became a box-office smash. It brought Newman the first of his many Oscar nominations.

Which director made the 1966 Cold War spy thriller Torn Curtain with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews?

Alfred Hitchcock both directed and produced the film, in which Newman's scientist pretends to defect to East Germany. Reviews were lukewarm by his standards, but it still made money.

Paul Newman, whose father ran a sporting goods store, grew up in Shaker Heights, a suburb of which Ohio city?

Cleveland gave Newman his first real stage: at the age of ten he acted at the city's Play House in a production of Saint George and the Dragon.

In which branch of the US military did Paul Newman serve in the Pacific during World War II as a radioman-gunner?

The Navy put Newman in torpedo bombers as a radioman and turret gunner. He missed a deadly kamikaze attack on the carrier Bunker Hill only because his pilot was grounded with an earache.

What does Newman's Own, the food company Paul Newman co-founded in 1982, do with all of its after-tax profits?

Newman's Own donates them to charity, and the total has passed hundreds of millions of dollars. Newman left the company to a foundation so that the giving would outlive him.

Which comedian played pool champion Minnesota Fats opposite Paul Newman in the 1961 drama The Hustler?

Jackie Gleason made every one of his own shots, and they were filmed in wide angle so that viewers could see the actor and the shot in the same frame.

Which ragtime composer's music, including The Entertainer, was revived by Paul Newman's 1973 caper film The Sting?

Scott Joplin's rags were adapted for the film by Marvin Hamlisch, producing a chart-topping soundtrack and a fresh wave of interest in the composer.

In The Sting, Paul Newman's con man out-cheats a gangster at which card game aboard a luxury train?

Poker is the bait: Newman's character poses as a boorish Chicago bookie to buy into a private high-stakes game on the 20th Century Limited, then beats a known cheat at his own trick.

Which playwright wrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth, both filmed with Paul Newman in the lead?

Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth had Newman in its original Broadway cast in 1959, three years before he repeated the role on screen.

Paul Newman's breakthrough film Somebody Up There Likes Me cast him as which real-life middleweight boxer?

Rocky Graziano's own 1955 autobiography was the basis for the film, which follows him from a violent childhood into the ring. Robert Wise directed.

Paul Newman finished second in which famous endurance race in 1979, sharing a Porsche 935?

Le Mans nearly gave the 54-year-old actor an even better result, until a jammed wheel nut cost his team 23 minutes in the pits.

Which watch model, a gift from his wife that Paul Newman wore while racing, set an auction record in 2017?

Rolex Daytona watches with his style of dial are now known to collectors by the actor's own name. He had given the original to his daughter's boyfriend in 1984.

Paul Newman was dropped from wartime pilot training at Yale after being diagnosed with which condition?

Colorblindness was the official reason, yet a later test found no such condition. Newman admitted he also struggled with the mathematics a pilot needs.

Paul Newman studied under Lee Strasberg at which famous New York workshop after a year at Yale's drama school?

The Actors Studio was a reason Newman hesitated to move west early on: he complained that Hollywood offered him no place to study.

Paul Newman raised his family far from Hollywood, settling in the town of Westport in which US state?

Connecticut made the Newmans one of the first Hollywood star couples to bring up a family outside California. He lived in Westport until his death in 2008.

On Newman Day, a college tradition tied to a remark credited to Paul Newman, students consume 24 of what in 24 hours?

Beers by the case are the whole point, and Newman disliked the link: in 2004 he took out a page in Princeton's student newspaper to say the remark was not his and that he disapproved.

Paul Newman played which Wild West outlaw in The Left Handed Gun, the 1958 debut film of director Arthur Penn?

Billy the Kid is shown as a misunderstood youth who gets mixed up in a cattle war. Eleven years later Newman played another real outlaw in a far bigger hit.

Which sibling film-makers directed Paul Newman as a scheming company director in the 1994 comedy The Hudsucker Proxy?

The Coens cast Newman as the villain, who installs a naive business graduate as company president as part of a stock scam. Tim Robbins played the stooge.

Which actress starred as the newspaper reporter opposite Paul Newman in the 1981 drama Absence of Malice?

Sally Field played a journalist who is fed a leaked file about a bogus investigation into Newman's character. The role brought him another Best Actor nomination.

Paul Newman formed First Artists in 1969, giving stars more creative control, with Sidney Poitier and which actress?

Barbra Streisand gave the company its most successful film, A Star Is Born. The idea was to let performers secure and develop their own projects.

Paul Newman plays an alcoholic Boston lawyer who takes on a medical malpractice case in which 1982 courtroom drama?

The Verdict follows a washed-up attorney who takes the case for the money and ends up fighting for justice. Sidney Lumet's film earned Newman a Best Actor nomination.

Paul Newman co-founded a Champ Car team in 1983 that won eight drivers' titles, alongside which team owner?

Carl Haas gave the team half of its double-barrelled name, Newman/Haas Racing. Nigel Mansell took the 1993 title in one of its cars.

Which actor won an Oscar as Dragline, the convict who fights and then comes to respect Paul Newman's Cool Hand Luke?

George Kennedy took Best Supporting Actor for the part, the one victory among the film's four nominations. Newman, up for Best Actor, went home empty-handed.

Paul Newman caught the motor racing bug while training for which 1969 film about a driver chasing the Indianapolis 500?

Winning sent Newman to a high-performance driving school, and the lessons stuck: he went on to compete in sports cars for the rest of his life.

Paul Newman was named Best Actor at which European film festival for the 1958 drama The Long, Hot Summer?

Cannes honoured Newman for playing Ben Quick, the role that brought him national fame. His co-star was the actress he married that same year.

Paul Newman's final stage role, in 2003, was the Stage Manager in Our Town, a play by which American writer?

Thornton Wilder's play ran through Newman's career: he had played young George in a live television musical version decades earlier, and the Broadway revival earned him a Tony nomination.

Which actor directed The Last Movie Stars, the 2022 documentary series about Paul Newman and his wife?

Ethan Hawke built the series on transcripts of interviews recorded for a memoir that Newman abandoned, with George Clooney reading Newman's words.

Which director made three films with Paul Newman: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and Slap Shot?

George Roy Hill won the Best Director Oscar for the second of them, which also took Best Picture. Newman once tried to hire him to take over a troubled shoot, but he declined.

Paul Newman took out a trade-paper advert apologising for his performance in which 1954 biblical epic, his film debut?

The Silver Chalice embarrassed Newman so much that he called it the worst film of the 1950s. He once screened it for guests, handing out pots and whistles so that they could heckle.

Which 1968 drama, Paul Newman's first film as a director, starred his wife and earned a Best Picture nomination?

Rachel, Rachel only got made because Newman stepped in when his wife could not find another director, and the pair deferred their pay. It brought him a Golden Globe for directing.

Paul Newman studied drama and economics at, and later gave $10 million to, which Ohio liberal arts college?

Kenyon received the gift in 2007 for scholarships. While directing a play there he met a freshman named Allison Janney, whom he went on to mentor.

Paul Newman launched Newman's Own with which writer friend, a biographer of Ernest Hemingway?

A. E. Hotchner also wrote the 1955 television play in which Newman played a boxer, the performance that led to his breakthrough film role.

Paul Newman made his Broadway debut in 1953, and met his future wife, in which William Inge play?

Picnic had Newman in its original cast while his future wife worked on the production as an understudy. The two did not marry until five years later.