The Paul Newman role George Clooney called “one of the great performances in any film, ever”
It’s not unusual for the next generation’s actor to be called the second coming of somebody from the last, and George Clooney has been fielding comparisons to Paul Newman for so long that it’s water off a duck’s back at this point.
He’s even embraced it to a certain extent, with the worst Batman in cinema history voicing the ‘New Hollywood’ icon in Ethan Hawke’s docuseries, The Last Movie Stars, and his ongoing collaborations with Brad Pitt have frequently seen them dubbed the closest thing the industry has seen to the star-powered Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting duo since.
They even came close to embracing it in the most blatant fashion possible, with discussions held about having Newman and Redford play the fathers of Clooney’s Danny Ocean and Pitt’s Rusty Ryan in one of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s films, but the on-the-nose idea didn’t make it past the discussion stage.
Clooney has also celebrated the ten-time Academy Award nominee and one-time winner as “one of the last real movie stars” alongside Redford, so it’s an understatement to say that, regardless of how being mentioned in the same breath as Newman may or may not have gotten under his skin when they were first being bandied around, he’s happy to embrace them.
They’ve even got a shared habit of pulling pranks on the co-stars and filmmakers they work with, so even as unintentional as he’s repeatedly claimed it to be, Clooney has channelled Newman’s spirit in more ways than one all by himself. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense for the former to celebrate one of the latter’s performances, which influenced one of his own, as one of the all-time great turns.
“I’ve certainly ripped off Paul Newman three or four times, though not as well,” he confessed to Time, before he fawned over Sidney Lumet’s 1982 legal drama, The Verdict. “Watch him at the end of the monologue in that film, where he’s talking to the jury. Actors usually load up for a monologue. He finished it, and he starts to talk again, and then he walks away.”
“To me, it’s one of the great performances in any film, ever,” Clooney added, and one he was happy to use as an influence for his own work in Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton. As fate would have it, both stars made the Oscar shortlist for ‘Best Actor’ for their efforts, although neither of them claimed the prize.
While Newman wasn’t the sort to pat himself on the back for a job well done, he did regard The Verdict as one of his finest hours in front of the camera, even if he only ended up with the part of the bedraggled, alcoholic lawyer Frank Galvin when Redford was fired after the filmmakers quickly realised he was all wrong for it.
For Clooney, it’s not only the best the legend has ever been onscreen, but it deserves to be remembered as one of the finest performances ever committed to celluloid.
