The actor who brought out the best in Paul Newman: “You can’t get away with any tricks”
Most actors have a set of techniques, tics, and tactics they use in every performance to deliver their best work, but there was one co-star who could see right through the ones Paul Newman built his legendary career on using.
It wasn’t Robert Redford either, despite the two icons being inextricably linked in cinema history. Of course, he’s inarguably Newman’s most famous co-star after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting became awards-laden and immensely profitable classics, and their offscreen bond only strengthened the way their names will forever be mentioned in the same breath.
There wasn’t a secret to Newman’s style of acting, though, but there were certain things he was intent on avoiding. For one thing, he’d stay as far away from vapid pretty-boy roles as possible after repeatedly voicing his indignation at everything he accomplished being boiled down to a piercing pair of blue eyes.
He wasn’t fond of being compared to his peers, with Newman noticeably bristling every time he was mentioned in the same breath as Marlon Brando. It was a pure talent that took him to the top, plain and simple, even if the one person who knew him better than anyone else was also the only one capable of convincing him to rein in his natural impulses for a different kind of performance.
Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, shared the screen in The Long, Hot Summer, Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!, From the Terrace, Paris Blues, A New Kind of Love, Winning, WUSA, The Drowning Pool, Mr & Mrs Bridge, and Harry & Son, the latter of which Newman also directed.
He also directed Woodward but didn’t play an on-camera role in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, The Shadow Box, and The Glass Menagerie, making his spouse his most frequent collaborator. Understandably, she knew exactly what made him tick when they were sharing a set.
“You can’t get away with any tricks,” he admitted to The New York Times. “There are shorthand things we do. I’m pretty vulnerable to her, and the things that she does just trigger things in me. Now, the problem with that is that it works terrifically for you when you are watching and responding to a scene. But you can also lose your objectivity.”
Woodward would use their unspoken bond to steer his performance in the pictures they made together, often without Newman even realising. However, he was aware that “the audience is going to be looking at something impartially, waiting to be moved,” which forced him to adopt a different way of thinking.
Working with Woodward constantly left Newman in two minds, albeit in a good way. He would alter, tone down, or increase the scope of his acting based on the suggestions of the person who knew him best while keeping one eye on what the audience would think of the finished scene to try and give everyone the best of all worlds.
