Paul Newman’s favourite role that he ever played: “I simply adore that character”
Actors aim to play as many iconic, acclaimed, or award-winning roles as they can throughout their careers, which doesn’t mean they’re obligated to pick a favourite. In many cases, it’s like choosing a favourite child, but there was one role Paul Newman enjoyed more than any other.
Blessed with the fortunate one-two punch of being both ridiculously handsome and one of his generation’s most gifted performers, Newman capitalised on the double whammy by spending his career toeing the line between bankable movie star and character man, effortlessly conquering both worlds.
It was an enviable position to be in, especially when he reigned as one of the industry’s most popular names during the tricky transition between the ‘Golden Age’ and the ‘New Hollywood’ era, and while many of his contemporaries fell out of favour when the paradigm shifted, Newman remained on top.
Although he was guilty of the occasional paycheque gig, Newman still managed a 50/50 average. The ten-time Academy Award nominee admitted that he’d only made two movies for the money, but the success of The Towering Inferno helped balance the scales after When Time Ran Out became a critical and commercial trainwreck. Still, two money-grabbing gigs in over half a century isn’t bad going.
Even when the lure of easy franchise roles became the go-to option for many of Hollywood’s biggest names from the 1970s onwards, when the blockbuster began to dominate the marketplace, Newman largely resisted the lure of reprising his signature roles. Again, though, the exceptions were largely worth it.
He finally nabbed that elusive and long-awaited Oscar when he brought Eddie Felson back to the screen in The Hustler sequel The Color of Money, even if he didn’t have much of a say in Cars 3 being the final feature-length entry in his filmography, considering he’d been dead for almost a decade by the time the third instalment in Pixar’s trilogy used some of his original voice recordings to bring back Doc Hudson.
The third and final character that Newman portrayed more than once held a special place in his heart, so much so that he actively fought for the protagonist to be the same person he’d played a decade previously, which wasn’t the original intention when 1975’s The Drowning Pool first entered development, despite having the same actor headlining another literary adaptation from the author of Harper.
The latter was based on Ross McDonald’s The Moving Target, and the former was adapted from the author’s eponymous novel. When Newman came aboard and discovered the main character had been renamed as Dave Ryan so that audiences wouldn’t consider it a direct sequel, he had it changed because “it’s great fun to get up in the morning and play Harper.”
Doubling down on his love for the role, Newman explained why he was so happy to return to the well. “I simply adore that character,” he said. “Because it will accommodate any kind of actor’s invention. It’s great to go to work, because you know you’re going to have a lot of fun that day.”
Viewers weren’t quite as receptive, with The Drowning Pool earning less money at the box office and scoring considerably less enthusiastic reviews than Harper, but Newman couldn’t have cared less when he was allowed to get back into the groove of a character he adored more than the rest.
