Paul Newman dead

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Screen giant Paul Newman has died in the US following a battle with cancer.
Newman had reportedly been receiving treatment for lung cancer in New York and had been photographed looking thin and frail in the past few months.

A spokeswoman for the 83-year-old Oscar-winner, Marni Tomljanovic, said Newman died on Friday at his home in home in Westport, Connecticut.

Newman, who appeared in about 60 movies, first made his name portraying brooding characters in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Hud. But he enhanced his superstar status later by playing winking rogues and anti-heroes - such as the title character in Cool Hand Luke, a bank robber in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and a suave con man in The Sting, co-starring in the latter two huge hits with Robert Redford.

He earned 10 Academy Award nominations but his only Oscar win was for best actor in the 1986 film The Color Of Money, portraying the same pool shark, Fast Eddie Felson, he had played when he was nominated in 1961 for The Hustler.

His first nomination was in 1959 and his last in 2003. 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, about the same time they both appeared in The Long Hot Summer, and Newman directed her in several films, including the Oscar-nominated Rachel, Rachel and The Glass Menagerie. Together they had three daughters and Newman had another two daughters from a previous marriage. His only son, Scott, died of a deliberate drug overdose in 1978.

A passionate racing car driver since the early 1970s, Newman became co-owner of Newman-Haas racing in 1982 and also founded Newman’s Own, a successful food company he built from the ground up in which all the proceeds go to charity.

More than $US220 million has been given away to humanitarian projects worldwide from sales of salad dressing, pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, salsa and wine. In 1988 he started Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a residential summer camp for seriously ill children.

His last screen appearance was as a conflicted mob boss in the 2002 film Road To Perdition opposite Tom Hanks, although he continued to provide voice work for films.

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