Paul Newman: 1925 – 2008

So, farewell then, Paul.

You were, arguably, the sexiest man on screen – but there was always method in your moodiness, and private thoughts in your beautiful, hooded blue eyes. True, ‘The Silver Chalice’ was a bit of a poison one for your debut for Warner Bros in 1954: you looked like a gimp in your Greek toga.

But where would De Niro have been without your aggressive animalism as Rocky Graziano in ‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’ for action director Robert Wise?

Both men and women were impressed by your rockin’ bare torso in Arthur Penn’s ‘The Left Handed Gun’ and your androgenous, crippled charm carried the gay subtext of Tennessee Williams’s ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ (1958).

The secret of your success? Every screen viewer wanted to take you home and – mmm… – look after you, not least your Fast Eddie Felson in ‘The Hustler’ (1961).

Your wife Joanne Woodward got that job – ‘Why have a hamburger, when you’ve got a steak at home?’. What’s more, you aged magnificently and developed a delightful, lop-sided sense of humour through the 1960s – who else could bicycle ride to Burt Bacharach without losing their Butch grandeur?

You had a magnificent late blaze: your Irish-American capo, John Rooney in ‘Road to Perdition’ (2005) showed how you’d learned ‘less is more’. And you were effortlessly cool, self-effacing and faithful – not least to your fast cars and burning rubber.

We’ll never see your like again – and you’ll be mightily missed.

Read Time Out's reviews of Paul Newman's key films from the past five decades:

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

The Hustler

Cool Hand Luke

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

The Hudsucker Proxy

Road to Perdition

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