Paul Newman’s favourite thing about finally winning an Oscar: “The great equaliser”
It’s very hard to believe certain actors or filmmakers, not to name any Bradley Coopers in particular, who claim they don’t care about winning an Oscar. However, when Paul Newman said he didn’t need one to validate his career, it was easy to take him at his word.
After all, he’d been the bridesmaid so often that he was well past giving a shit about trophies, especially when he’d focused on letting his body of work speak for itself. He was an A-lister, a ‘New Hollywood’ icon, a bona fide box office draw, and one of the industry’s most popular leading men, all of which he achieved without a single Academy Award to his name.
It reached a point where Newman probably got bored sitting in the crowd so often, safe in the knowledge that his name wouldn’t be the one read aloud onstage. As an on-camera performer, he’d been unsuccessful in his pursuit of a ‘Best Actor’ gong for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Hud, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Absence of Malice, and The Verdict.
When he diversified into filmmaking and saw his feature-length directorial debut, Rachel, Rachel, shortlisted for ‘Best Picture’, he once again came up empty-handed. Ironically, Newman was awarded an honorary Oscar for his contributions to cinema in 1986, just one year before he won the real thing.
On his eighth competitive nomination, and his first in a supporting category, Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money finally ended one of the ceremony’s most famous ongoing losing streaks. Before the awards had been dished out, Newman explained why he was so desperate to finally claim one, and it had absolutely nothing to do with his career or any insecurity in his legacy.
Instead, it was all about his home life with his wife, Joanne Woodward, having been lording it over him since 1957 when she was named ‘Best Actress’ for her performance as the title character in The Three Faces of Eve. “Every time we get into an argument about cooking or laundering shirts, she shakes her Oscar at me, and I’m dead in the water,” he said. “It would be a great equaliser now after 33 years.”
His tongue may have been planted somewhat in cheek, but if there’s an easy way for either half of a celebrated acting couple to get the upper hand in an argument, it’s to bust out their Oscar that the other one doesn’t have, wave it in their face, and basically flip the bird at their lack of accomplishments to get them to do the dishes or make dinner.
They’d been married for three decades by the time Newman finally got his flowers for his turn in the Scorsese-helmed sequel, and it’s easy to imagine him weaponising it the first time he and Woodward had a disagreement. He’d described her constant Oscar-waving as “sickening,” and now that he finally had one of his own, the pair were back on level terms whenever they argued over whose turn it was to do the ironing.
