PAUL NEWMAN (Doc Hudson) lends his legendary voice to this solid citizen of Radiator Springs who never races to conclusions and ends up inspiring McQueen.
Newman, who has two Oscars®, has been one of the American cinema’s most important and most prolific actors for over half a century. He is a philanthropist, a humanitarian, a race-car driver and the founder of a multi-million-dollar food empire, Newman’s Own. In addition to giving the profits to charity, he also ran Frank Sinatra out of the spaghetti-sauce business. On the downside, the spaghetti sauce is out-grossing his films.
The films, which number more than fifty on his resume, have incidentally made him a screen legend. In 1987, he won an Academy Award® for Best Actor for his performance as pool shark “Fast” Eddie Felson in Martin Scorsese’s “The Color of Money.” It marked a reprisal of the role he had played 25 years earlier in “The Hustler,” which had brought him his second of eight Best Actor Oscar® nominations. He received his first Oscar® nomination in 1959 for his work opposite Elizabeth Taylor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and has also been nominated for his performances in “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke,” “Absence of Malice,” “The Verdict,” “Nobody’s Fool,” and “The Road to Perdition.”
Newman has also been recognized for his work behind the camera, earning an Academy Award® nomination for Best Picture and Golden Globe® award for Best Director for “Rachel, Rachel,” which he produced and directed and which starred his wife, Joanne Woodward. In addition, Newman was awarded an Honorary Oscar® in 1986 in recognition of his outstanding contributions to film, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in 1984. In 1992, he and Joanne Woodward received the Kennedy Center Honors.
Newman began his career on the stage, making his Broadway debut in the 1953 production of William Inge’s “Picnic.” The following year he made his first appearance on the big screen in “The Silver Chalice,” but it was his portrayal of boxer Rocky Graziano in 1956’s “Somebody Up There Likes Me” that catapulted him to stardom. Over the next decade, the actor starred in two dozen films, including “The Long, Hot Summer,” for which he was named Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, “The Left Handed Gun”; “Exodus”; and “Sweet Bird of Youth.”
In 1969, Newman teamed with Robert Redford in George Roy Hill’s smash hit Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” which became an instant classic. Four years later, Newman, Redford, and Hill reunited in the Academy Award®-winning Best Picture “The Sting.”
Newman’s iconic status has never waned over the years. His long list of film credits also includes “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean,” “The Towering Inferno,” “The Drowning Pool,” “Slap Shot,” “Fort Apache the Bronx,” “Fat Man and Little Boy,” “Blaze,” “The Hudsucker Proxy,” and “Message in a Bottle.”
Additionally, Newman directed, produced and starred in “Harry and Son,” produced and directed “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,” and directed “The Glass Menagerie” and the telefilm “The Shadow Box,” the latter earning him an Emmy® nomination. Newman received an Emmy® award, Golden Globe® and Screen Actors Guild Award® for his performance in the miniseries “Empire Falls,” for which he also served as executive producer. He recently received a Tony® nomination for his performance in the Broadway production of “Our Town.”
Apart from his film work, Newman has a well-known passion for automobile racing. He is also a dedicated philanthropist, whose Newman’s Own line of food products—all the proceeds of which go to charity—has generated more than $200 million in donations. He is also devoted to the Scott Newman Center, named for his son, and the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang Camp, which provides a fun-filled environment for seriously ill children. In 1994, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Newman with the coveted Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Professional credits aside, Newman is married to the best actress on the planet, was number 19 on Nixon’s enemies list, and is generally considered by professionals to be the worst fisherman on the East Coast.
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