January 21, 2005. Copyright 2005, Graphic News. All rights reserved

AmericaÕs blue-eyed boy turns 80
By Elisabeth Ribbans

LONDON, January 21, Graphic News:  Just like his blue-eyed good looks, Paul NewmanÕs movie career has shown a remarkable power to endure. Since his first screen success, playing boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), through the instant classics such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, both of which saw him dream-teamed with Robert Redford, he has starred in more than 60 movies spanning half a century.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on January 26, 1925, the young Newman served as a navy radio operator during World War II. Returning home, he took an English degree and then briefly studied drama at Yale before joining the famous Actors Studio in New York.

First Oscar-nominated in 1958 for his role opposite Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, he was nominated a further five times -- for The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Absence of Malice and The Verdict -- before finally carrying off the statuette in 1986 for his reprise of Hustler character Fast Eddie Felson in Martin ScorseseÕs The Color of Money.

Most recently he starred as a mobster boss in Sam MendesÕ 2002 film, Road to Perdition -- a performance that once again earned an Academy Award nomination. Married for 47 years to his second wife and often co-star, Joanne Woodward, he is also well-known for NewmanÕs Own, a non-profit food company that since 1982 has donated more than $150m to charity. Renowned for his self-mocking modesty he once quipped: ÒThe embarrassing thing is that the salad dressing is outgrossing my films.Ó
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