Great Quotes from Paul Newman

According to the Associate Press, Paul Newman died at his farm house near Westport, Conn. yesterday, September 26, 2008. The legendary actor with the striking blue eyes and charming smile was 83 years old. Joanne Woodward, his wife of 50 years, was by his side along with other family members.

Paul Newman was nominated for Academy Awards 10 times and won the Oscar for Best Actor in The Color of Money, and was the recipient of two honorary Oscars.

Born Paul Leonard Newman on January26, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, Newman was the son of a well-to-do family. At the age of 25 he attended Yale University's School of Drama, where he was spotted by two agents who invited him to come to New York to pursue professional acting. After moving to New York and taking on several small television roles, he landed the part as an understudy in the Broadway play Picnic, where he met another understudy, Joanne Woodward. There was a strong attraction from the very beginning but Newman was married with two children.

He eventually landed a role co-starring with Joanne Woodward in The Long, Hot Summer in 1957. It was during the shooting of this film that he, Woodward and his wife Jackie all realized that the two stars were meant to be together. Jackie consented to a divorce allowing he and Woodward to be married in Las Vegas in 1958.

Paul Newman is best known for his films: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof(1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud(1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967) and the popular Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

Always a philanthropist, he donated millions to charity since the 1980's. Newman was also known as a race car enthusiast.

Some of his famous personal quotes:

Why fool around with hamburger when you have steak at home?

Acting is like letting your pants down - you're exposed.

The embarrassing thing is that my salad dressing is out-grossing my films.

I really just can't watch myself. I see all the machinery at work and it just drives me nuts.

If I ever feel like I'm doing something I've done before, I scrap it and start over again.

When I realized I was going to have to be a whore, to put my face on the label, I decided that the only way I could do it was to give away all the money we make. Over the years, that ethical stance has given us a 30 per cent boost. One in three customers buys my products because all the profits go to good causes and the rest buy the stuff because it is good.

It's all been a bad joke that just ran out of control. I got into food for fun but the business got a mind of its own. Now - my good Lord - look where it has gotten me. My products are on supermarket shelves, in cinemas, in the theater. And they say show business is odd.

I like racing but food and pictures are more thrilling. I can't give them up. In racing you can be certain, to the last thousandth of a second, that someone is the best, but with a film or a recipe, there is no way of knowing how all the ingredients will work out in the end. The best can turn out to be awful and the worst can be fantastic. Cooking is like performing and performing like cooking.

I'm a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.

You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: 'Holy Christ, whaddya know - I'm still around!' It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.

I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.

If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Being on President Nixon's enemies list was the highest single honor I've ever received. Who knows who's listening to me now and what government list I'm on?

I never ask my wife about my flaws. Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor. You don't want any woman to look under the carpet, guys, because there's lots of flaws underneath. Joanne believes my character in a film we did together, 'Mr. and Mrs. Bridge' comes closest to who I really am. I personally don't think there's one character who comes close . . . but I learned a long time ago not to disagree on things that I don't have a solid opinion about.

Study your craft and know who you are and what's special about you. Find out what everyone does on a film set, ask questions and listen. Make sure you live life, which means don't do things where you court celebrity, and give something positive back to our society.

I've repeatedly said that for people as little in common as Joanne and myself, we have an uncommonly good marriage. We are actors. We make pictures and that's about all we have in common. Maybe that's enough. Wives shouldn't feel obligated to accompany their husbands to a ball game, husbands do look a bit silly attending morning coffee breaks with the neighborhood wives when most men are out at work. Husbands and wives should have separate interests, cultivate different sets of friends and not impose on the other...You can't spend a lifetime breathing down each other's necks.

Twenty-five years ago I couldn't walk down the street without being recognized. Now I can put a cap on, walk anywhere and no one pays me any attention. They don't ask me about my movies and they don't ask me about my salad dressing because they don't know who I am. Am I happy about this? You bet.

I've been accused of being aloof. I'm not. I'm just wary.

The first time I remember women reacting to me was when we were filming Hud (1963) in Texas. Women were literally trying to climb through the transoms at the motel where I stayed. At first, it's flattering to the ego. At first. Then you realize that they're mixing me up with the roles I play - characters created by writers who have nothing to do with who I am.

I had no natural gift to be anything--not an athlete, not an actor, not a writer, not a director, a painter of garden porches--not anything. So I've worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me.

We are very, very different people and yet somehow we fed off those varied differences and instead of separating us, it has made the whole bond a lot stronger. (about his marriage to Joanne)

I picture my epitaph: 'Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.'

I'm always puzzled by this talk about star...image. I think there's people who are writers or barbers or mechanics or race car drivers that have certain recognizable personalities, and I don't think just because they happen to be on the screen that it makes them any more exceptional.

I will continue to get behind the wheel of a racing car as long as I am able. But that could all end tomorrow...

In the early days of films, the movie star in this country replaced royalty. They've been demoted since then but they're still treated as beings larger than life.

A man can only be judged by his actions, and not by his good intentions or his beliefs.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experiences.

Almost everything I learned about being an actor came from those early years at the Actor's Studio.

I would like it if people would think that beyond Newman, there's a spirit that takes action, a heart, and a talent that doesn't come from my blue eyes.

I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me.

I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried - who tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out.

A man with no enemies is a man with no character.

Men experience many passions in a lifetime. One passion drives away the one before it.

Once I started taking drama classes, I asked myself why I had ever wasted so much time on a football team.

As long as my heart continues to beat, I think I will continue.

Acting isn't really a creative process, it's an interpretative one.

The characters I have the least in common with are the ones I have the greatest success with. The further a role is from my own experience, the more I try to deepen it.

To be an actor, you have to be a child.

Joanne has always given me unconditional support in all my choices and endeavors, and that includes my race car driving, which she deplores. To me, that's love.

You can't stop being a citizen just because you have a Screen Actors' Guild card.

I wasn't driven to acting by an inner compulsion. I was running away from the sporting goods business.

I'm not able to work anymore as an actor and still at the level that I would want to. I'm just, you know, you start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So I think that's pretty much a closed book for me.

I have a face that does not belong to a thief.

I have an extraordinary attention span. I manage to juggle two or three different ideas at the same time, and that's probably, if I have a gift, that's probably the best gift that's given me.

Once you've seen your face on a bottle of salad dressing. it's hard to take yourself seriously.