Actor Paul Newman Dies at 83.

Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning
superstar who personified cool as the anti-hero of such films as "Hud,"
"Cool Hand Luke" and "The Color of Money" — and as an activist, race
car driver and popcorn impresario — has died. He was 83.

Newman
died Friday after a long battle with cancer at his farmhouse near
Westport, publicist Jeff Sanderson said. He was surrounded by his
family and close friends.
In May, Newman had dropped plans to direct a fall production of "Of Mice and Men," citing unspecified health issues.
He got his start in theater and on television
during the 1950s, and went on to become one of the world's most
enduring and popular film stars, a legend held in awe by his peers. He
was nominated for Oscars 10 times, winning one regular award and two
honorary ones, and had major roles in more than 50 motion pictures,
including "Exodus," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The
Verdict," "The Sting" and "Absence of Malice."

Newman
worked with some of the greatest directors of the past half century,
from Alfred ( No Swearing ) and John Huston to Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese
and the Coen brothers. His co-stars included Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren
Bacall, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and, most famously, Robert Redford, his
sidekick in "Butch Cassidy" and "The Sting."

50-year romance
He
sometimes teamed with his wife and fellow Oscar winner, Joanne
Woodward, with whom he had one of Hollywood's rare long-term marriages.
"I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?" Newman told Playboy
magazine when asked if he was tempted to stray.
They
wed in 1958, around the same time they both appeared in "The Long Hot
Summer," and Newman directed her in several films, including "Rachel,
Rachel" and "The Glass Menagerie."
With his strong, classically handsome face and
piercing blue eyes, Newman was a heartthrob just as likely to play
against his looks, becoming a favorite with critics for his convincing
portrayals of rebels, tough guys and losers. "I was always a character
actor," he once said. "I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood."

Newman
had a soft spot for underdogs in real life, giving tens of millions to
charities through his food company and setting up camps for severely
ill children. Passionately opposed to the Vietnam War, and in favor of
civil rights, he was so famously liberal that he ended up on President
Nixon's "enemies list," one of the actor's proudest achievements, he
liked to say.
Newman was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the second
of two boys of Arthur S. Newman, a partner in a sporting goods store,
and Theresa Fetzer Newman.

He
was raised in the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights, where he was
encouraged him to pursue his interest in the arts by his mother and his
uncle Joseph Newman, a well-known Ohio poet and journalist.
Following
World War II service in the Navy, he enrolled at Kenyon College in
Gambier, Ohio, where he got a degree in English and was active in
student productions.
He
later studied at Yale University's School of Drama, then headed to New
York to work in theater and television, his classmates at the famed
Actor's Studio including Brando, James Dean and Karl Malden. His
breakthrough was enabled by tragedy: Dean, scheduled to star as the
disfigured boxer in a television adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "The
Battler," died in a car crash in 1955. His role was taken by Newman,
then a little-known performer.
Newman started in movies the year before, in
"The Silver Chalice," a costume film he so despised that he took out an
ad in Variety to apologize. By 1958, he had won the best actor award at
the Cannes Film Festival for the shiftless Ben Quick in "The Long Hot
Summer."

In December 1994, about a month before his 70th birthday, he told Newsweek magazine he had changed little with age.
"I'm
not mellower, I'm not less angry, I'm not less self-critical, I'm not
less tenacious," he said. "Maybe the best part is that your liver can't
handle those beers at noon anymore," he said.
Newman is survived by his wife, five children, two grandsons and his older brother Arthur.