Still, it's a fascinating portrait of an actor of preternatural beauty who worked extraordinarily hard at his craft. His complicated childhood and fraught personal life as a young man imprinted him early with a need to be seen and yet fiercely guard his true self. Understanding the irony that his looks would breed jealousy and suspicion in an industry where beauty opens doors, Paul Newman pursued gritty, hard-edged roles ( Hud, Cool Hand Luke), but there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that he would escape the sex symbol status that vaulted him to the top of the celebrity A-list.

Newman was a complicated man. The forces that drove him were highly contradictory. Keenly aware of his privilege and charitably-inclined, he was also intricately bound to the dictates of a lusty machismo, and fenced with the sparkling blades of his own vanity throughout the course of his life. His mother, he felt, treated him like a doll and a decoration - like a girl, at one point he says - which led him into a dark and disorganizing conflict with regard to his appearance; a conflict that simmered through the many years of his film career and elevation to the status of sex symbol. I think anyone who enjoys reading about complex people will enjoy this book. You don't need to know anything about Paul Newman or even be interested in Hollywood. This book isn't a Hollywood book, it's a deeply personal book about man who never believed his own hype. also a director, race car driver, husband, father, philanthropist, (went further than most actors), business owner of a non-profit ‘Newman’s Own’ (salad dressings, etc.), struggled with alcohol, was often lonely, a private man who needed to have a lot of people around him….. The Last Movie Stars". Сериал, посветен на въпроса, как може да си звезда, и все пак да останеш женен за една и съща жена 50 години, да преживееш самоубийството на сина си, да участваш в движението за граждански права на Лутър Кинг, да дариш милиони за грижа за болни деца и наркомани като насмешливо сложиш лика си върху домашен сос из супермаркетите и същевременно живееш на ръба като автомобилен състезател. Newman's piercing bright blue eyes were a huge part of what made him so strikingly handsome, but in Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, he discusses feeling as if his looks were obscuring his hard work.

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An excessively private man he started to make notes for an intended Memoir and then gave it up. His children found much of the documents long after his death and decided to share it with the public. Since they are his children they would know better than I if he would be pleased about this or not – considering he passed away so many years ago, maybe now he couldn’t care less. This unforgettable and extraordinary memoir, one of the best and most compelling books of 2022, is a breathtakingly honest mea culpa from a complicated man striving to excavate his demons; according to Newman's daughter Clea, who writes the memoir's afterword, he succeeded in his final decades. Newman's often traumatic childhood is brilliantly detailed. He talks about his teenage insecurities, his early failures with women, his rise to stardom, his early rivals (Brando and Dean), his first marriage, his drinking, his philanthropy, the death of his son Scott, his strong desire for his daughters to know and understand the truth about their father. Perhaps the most moving material in the book centers around his relationship with Joanne Woodward - their love for each other, his dependence on her, the way she shaped him intellectually, emotionally and sexually. he was honest to the core, was a loyal friend, very well respected by most people, loved to laugh at his own jokes….. Newman was a fine driver, who was famous in Hollywood for doing his own stunt driving as often as not.' Ron Dennis, Formula 1's McLaren Chief

This was at times difficult to listen to because as he points out, there is a difference between the inner child and the outer self, the movie star persona who we all expect to see or meet. He was not an easy man (in his own words), but he does believe he always strives to do what is best especially as he has grown older. The Paul Newman narration is done by Jeff Daniels and is well done and easy to listen to. To start, this book published 14 years after Newman's death is a book Paul Newman never meant for you to read. It was compiled from hours and hours of interviews he did with a screenwriter friend decades ago, and after that session, he decided to burn all of the recordings. However, this book was compiled at the wishes of two of his daughters from the transcripts. Much of this is revealed at the end of the book in an afterward. This is a surprisingly candid look into Paul Newman’s own life, the good, the bad and the ugly. I have lived in Cleveland and its suburbs my entire life and always find it interesting how many famous actors, athletes and writers have come from Northeastern Ohio. Mr. Newman’s birthplace of Shaker Hts. is very familiar to me with its economic and religious diversity. While he relates that he and his family were well off financially in his early years, emotionally he felt on his own or smothered by his mother for only his outer appearance. His and his mother’s relationship would be tumultuous for her entire life. I have been a huge fan of Paul Newman since I saw my first of his movies, The Long Hot Summer, which also happened to feature his wife Joanne Woodward. Those baby blues led to my major infatuation on my part and even to this day, I consider Paul Newman to be a celebrity crush. When I heard a posthumous memoir was created from his writing and interviews, I knew I needed to get my hands on it. Memoir is loosely applied here. This is the transcript of a recorded series of conversations between Paul Newman and screenwriter friend Stewart Stern in the late 80s- early 90s that two of Newman's daughters published years after their father's death, with added bits and pieces from other friends, family and industry colleagues to round out the anecdotes and memories. In this way, it is mostly Newman's own words, but it's impossible to know if this is how he would have chosen to present his story and his voice.Throughout Newman's account of his life (narrated very well in audio by Jeff Daniels), there is a sense of real loneliness, at feeling like he wasn't always in control of his own life, and that he resented the intrusion of fame. He found it boggling how women eventually found him to be such a sex symbol, as he couldn't get a girl to even talk to him until after he had been discharged from the military. There were a lot of fascinating moments in this book: reading about his relationship with his parents (his mother treated him mostly like a prop and once he was married to his first wife, insisted they sleep in twin beds), his family's complicated relationship with Judaism and how he was the rare actor who chose not to change his name, his time working with Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio, his relationship with Joanne Woodward, the comparisons to Marlon Brando and James Dean, etc., plus the information from his daughter about his philanthropic efforts. What’s an insecure showoff to do? “Acting gave me a sanctuary where I was able to create emotions without being penalized for having them,” Newman writes. Yet he also says he never really liked the craft but discovered that he was good at it, at least in the eyes of others, and worked hard to make it a career. The later part of his life when he started his philanthropic organizations and camps for children, he continued to question his life and motivations. His love of car racing continued throughout his later life, and he was quite successful personally and professionally with his racing team. It was also interesting to hear about his view of or relationship with other actors and directors. The one thing I’ve always admired is excellence. I recognize it in almost anything: plumbers, museum guides, limousine drivers, bank tellers—I delight in seeing it. Maybe we choose those arenas in which we have the best chance for excellence. For me, maybe that’s acting, or being somehow connected to the theater, or capitalizing on the way I look, or fooling people”