Instead of settling for a life running his family's sporting goods store in Cleveland, Paul Newman opted for a career as an actor, attending the Yale School of Drama before relocating to NYC, where he worked frequently on TV during its Golden Era in the 1950s. After attracting critical attention for his 1953 Broadway debut as Alan Seymour in William Inge's "Picnic", the compact, good-looking actor with the devastating pale blue eyes signed with Warner Bros. He made his first screen appearance as the miscast star of "The Silver Chalice" (1954), a curious biblical epic which convinced Newman to exercise his option and return to Broadway in "The Desperate Hours" (1955). His first positive film notices came for his portrayal of boxer Rocky Graciano in Robert Wise's "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956).

Labeled a Marlon Brando imitator and a James Dean successor, thanks more to the characters he assumed than to any conscious mimicry, Newman began developing his distinct "ne'er-do-well" persona with a method-acting turn as Billy the Kid in a 1955 "Philco Playhouse TV" play by Gore Vidal and the feature it inspired, "The Left-Handed Gun" (1958). His volatile performances as Southerners--"Cat On a Hot Tin Roof" (1958), "The Long Hot Summer" (1958), and "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962)--featured him as cynical, troubled opportunists with a sex appeal balanced by his seeming contempt for women. Maintaining a high batting average of quality films in which the sly, sometimes cruel machismo of his alienated but cocky misfits gave way to reveal moments of vulnerability, Newman excelled as the aspiring pool champion of "The Hustler" (1961), the sexually predatory "Hud" (1963) and the prison inmate "Cool Hand Luke" (1967). (The latter was memorable for his famous egg-eating challenge.) His less successful roles during this period emphasized either his animal energy (e.g., his bandit-rapist in the American revamp of "Rashomon", "The Outrage" 1964) or his keen intelligence (e.g., the romantic comedy of "A New Kind of Love" 1963; Alfred Hitchcock's dreadful "Torn Curtain" 1966, with Newman as a physicist!).

The late 60s saw Newman branch out in both production and direction. Fueled by commercial success and a degree of artistic dissatisfaction, he joined with Sidney Poitier Barbra Streisand Steve Mcqueenand several other stars to form the First Artists production company in 1969. The venture, though much imitated, did little for the careers of its founders but did result in some interesting, if intermittent work (for Newman, "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" 1972). His deliberately modest yet highly sensitive directorial debut "Rachel, Rachel" (1968), showcasing his second wife Joanne Woodward as a lonely teacher, garnered the Best Director award from the New York Film Critics Circle, but his attempt to direct on a bigger scale, the outdoor actioner "Sometimes a Great Notion" (1971), adapted from the Ken Kesey novel, met with mixed reviews. Newman would direct Woodward in his next three feature assignments ("The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" 1973, "Harry and Son" 1984, which he also co-scripted, and "The Glass Menagerie" 1987), and his TV directing debut "The Shadow Box" (ABC, 1980), produced by his daughter Susan.

Newman continued to enjoy popular success in front of the camera, scoring at the box-office with lightweight films like George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidyand the Sundance Kid" (1969) and "The Sting" (1973), in which he played characters lacking his signature edge opposite Robert Redford. The late 70s saw some bold project choices enjoying varying degrees of success, from the sly critique of Robert Altman's "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson" (1976) to Altman's unsuccessful futuristic saga "Quintet" (1979), with the offbeat detective yarn "The Drowning Pool" (1975) and the engagingly raucous if uneven "Slap Shot" (1977) in between. Newman proved highly effective in a number of senior roles in the 80s and 90s, his physical prowess maturing into a lean asceticism in films ranging from "Absence of Malice" (1981) to "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge" (1990), opposite Woodward, with an especially outstanding performance as an alcoholic lawyer attempting a comeback in "The Verdict" (1982). His flashy Earl Long in "Blaze" (1989) was vaguely reminiscent of his misbehaving Southerners from days of yore, and his villainous character turn in "The Hudsucker Proxy" (1994) played upon his status as one of Hollywood's elder statesmen.

The Academy bestowed upon Newman an Honorary Oscar for Career Achievement in 1985, acknowledging his position as one of the industry's top leading men, and the Best Actor Oscar the following year for Martin Scorsese's "The Color of Money", in which his 'Fast' Eddie Felson from "The Hustler" passed on his secrets to a younger generation (Tom Cruise). Newman has maintained his clout as a box-office headliner, despite joining the ranks of senior citizens, often updating the moody, dangerous persona of his youth in characters from the Geritol set. As he neared his 70th birthday, Newman dazzled audiences with his touching turn as an aging "no-account" in Robert Benton's "Nobody's Fool" (1994), earning a ninth Best Actor Academy Award nomination. He reteamed with Benton for "Twilight" (1998), a contemporary detective story set in Los Angeles before playing Kevin Costner's father in the romantic drama "Message in a Bottle" (1999). Newman then portrayed a bank robber who teams up with a nurse for one last job in "Where the Money Is" (2000).

Newman long ago established a reputation for his social conscience but has devoted himself more and more to good works as he has grown older. He and wife Woodward built The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for children with cancer and other serious blood-related diseases. Named for Butch Cassidys gang, the camp is only one recipient of the ever-multiplying profits from Newman's Own, a line of food products, including popcorn, lemonade, salsa and spaghetti sauce. On March 21, 1994, Newman received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, honoring the more than $80 million he had raised to that date for a variety of charitable organizations. For each of his directors, from Martin Ritt and John Huston to Robert Altman and Robert Benton, Newman was able to find a nuance of character and combine it with a charismatic aloofness, but his abiding legacy may well be as a champion of the unfortunate, an exclamation point on his career as a major film star.

Newman returned to the screen with the weighty portrayal of an Irish mafia boss in the Sam Mendes directed "Road to Perdition" with Tom Hanks. Though the film failed to live up to the high expectations generated by it director and stars, Newman again gave a powerful perfomance and was justifiably awarded an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, his tenth since 1959.