Paul Newman was born on January 26, 1925 outside of Cleveland, Ohio. In his childhood, Paul grew up with many insecurities as he felt that his mother was untrustworthy and that his father belittled him, who treated him like a nobody. In his adolescence, his insecurities made him think that he was someone who did not stand out in anything. .
He was not good for studies, nor sports, nor did he have the money to be a leader, going so far as to say in his autobiography that he was nothing by nature. He also said that when he began to be a car racer he drove badly and when he was an American football player he gave up. He says that he was really very bad, many considering himself more ambitious than talented.
Paul had an older brother named Art, who teased him. At one time Paul wanted to be an airplane pilot, but being color blind would turn out to be another dream that he could not achieve. At university he graduated in economics and there he got involved in theater classes.
His film debut would be in “The Silver Goblet”, which according to him was the worst film made in the 1950s. In 1966 the film would be included in the television schedule and Newman himself apologized for his horrible performance and asked I strongly advise you not to see it. However, the public became more interested than normal and broke audience records.
But in 1956 the film would arrive that would transform him into a world star, “marked by hate”, where he played a boxer. In 1958 during the movie, “The Long Hot Summer” he met Joane Woodward, Paul separated from his wife and married her in Las Vegas, no one was betting on that marriage, however, they formed one of the most stable couples in the world. show for 50 years.
While Paul later acknowledged that he would have preferred to handle things completely differently with his children, he did, in fact, try to correct past mistakes in their adult lives, but the death of his son Scott from an overdose would always weigh on him. awareness.
Newman also had his addictions, in his case it was alcohol, which made his situation worrying in 1971. His son, who was also an actor, wanted to be emancipated from his famous father, after being part of the film “The Carnival of the eagles” in 1975 said, “I don’t want my father to help me, I want to get a job on my own merits,” however, in that same year he was arrested for hitting a police officer and acts of vandalism, so his father had to respond by paying several bonds.
Scott once told him that it was hell to be his son and also said “everyone expects me to behave like him or to introduce them to him, the scripts that Hollywood gives me are actually so that they end up in his hands, I am “Paul Newman Jr. but I don’t have blue eyes or his talent, I don’t have his luck either, I don’t have anything, I only have the name.”
To all this, Paul Newman in his biography would define his relationship with Scott as distressing and confusing. The young man had a motorcycle accident in 1978 and was prescribed medication that would only worsen his addiction and that year he would be hospitalized. voluntarily in a psychiatric clinic. When leaving there one night in a hotel in Los Angeles, he mixed alcohol with different drugs, dying from an overdose at the age of 28.
Paul Newman said in this regard, “the guilt I feel for my son’s death will stay with me for the rest of my life.” And it was so since the death of his son Scott made him enter a guilty state from which he could not escape, going so far as to say, “many times I got on my knees and asked Scott for forgiveness, I ask for forgiveness for that part of me.” that drove him to his own destruction, what would it have taken to be able to avoid that? I really don’t know.” This was told by his other daughters.
Thus, on September 26, 2008, the actor died from lung cancer at his home in Westport. Paul had received his diagnosis nine days before his wife, Jane Woodard, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.