The groundbreaking role Paul Newman was “insulted” to be offered: “He didn’t like it at all”
As an actor who took his job very seriously and also happened to be one of his generation’s most naturally gifted performers, Paul Newman wasn’t often caught starring in mindless fluff.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t averse to the odd flight of fancy or paycheque gig, though, even if the results weren’t always stellar. The ‘Golden Age’ legend made over 60 features during a stellar career; only three of which could be described as fantastical, and two of them were terrible.
The obvious outlier is The Towering Inferno, which is comfortably one of the best efforts to emerge from the 1970s disaster boom, if not the best, bar none. The dick-measuring contest between Newman and Steve McQueen didn’t harm the picture, and the former was savvy enough to know he was making a “junk” movie, even if he did compliment it by calling the flick “distinguished junk.”
A year later, he headlined Robert Altman’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi, Quintet, which was torn limb from limb by critics and tanked at the box office, which was the least it deserved. A slow, ponderous, and remarkably uninteresting film from a heavyweight pairing of director and star, it’s easily one of his worst.
However, it can never truly be called the worst thing Newman ever appeared in because he also headlined When Time Ran Out, a risible return to the disaster genre that he admitted he only made because it significantly boosted his bank balance, and he hated it so much that he completely wiped it from his memory to the point he couldn’t even remember what it was called.
Needless to say, unless anyone wants to count his voice-only role in Cars, Newman stayed away from anything remotely unrealistic for the final two decades of his professional life. He was offered the chance to take top billing in a groundbreaking, revolutionary, and four-time Academy Award-winning favourite that made a killing at the box office and pushed visual effects forward by leaps and bounds, which left him indignant.
“I actually offered the Bob Hoskins role to Paul Newman, and he was insulted,” Robert Zemeckis admitted on Happy Sad Confused when reflecting on the arduous road to making Who Framed Roger Rabbit. “He said, ‘What? You want me to do a movie where I’m playing against a cartoon rabbit?’ He didn’t like it at all.”
In the actor’s defence, he wasn’t the only one to baulk at playing Eddie Valiant in the ambitious hybrid of live-action and animation, all wrapped up in a comedic and noir-tinged mystery. Eddie Murphy rues the day he joined Newman in immediately turning it down because he didn’t think it stood a chance of success, while Bill Murray was paid not to play the part.
It’s hard to imagine anyone else but Bob Hoskins as Valiant, which is ironic when the script had made its way through at least Newman, Murphy, and Murray, never mind the raft of other names who were rumoured at one stage or another, including Harrison Ford, Chevy Chase, Robin Williams, and Jack Nicholson.
Still, Newman feels like the wrong fit, but he didn’t have to be so angry about it when Zemeckis came knocking.
