Why Paul Newman “almost had a heart attack” after turning down three roles in the same movie
Big-name actors turn down roles all the time, but very rarely do they turn down three different roles in the same movie. Paul Newman did, and while he didn’t exactly regret it, his bank balance certainly did.
Newman may have been one of Hollywood’s biggest stars for most of his mainstream career, but he didn’t sell out like many freshly minted A-listers do. There’s nothing wrong with that when blockbusters are the easiest way to pay the bills, but his only dalliances with special effects were outliers.
Two of them were utter shite as well, which no doubt helped convince him to stay true to his craft. The Towering Inferno is a classic, one of the best disaster movies ever made, but Quinet and When Time Ran Out were awful, so Newman was much better off sticking to projects that would challenge him.
It’s a rite of passage for every fast-rising leading man to be inundated with big-budget offers to capitalise on their fame, but Newman was 20 years into his career before he made The Towering Inferno, and he’d resisted all approaches to lend his undoubted talent to frivolous flights of fancy.
When he did finally agree, he was happy to admit he did it for one reason, and one reason only: money. However, he would have made a lot more from Richard Donner’s Superman than he did from The Towering Inferno, Quintet, and When Time Ran Out combined, especially when he discovered how much Marlon Brando walked away with from a scant few minutes of screentime.
Anyone who was anyone had been linked with the title role eventually filled by Christopher Reeve, and Newman had no interest in squeezing himself into a spandex costume and wearing his underpants on the outside. Undeterred, Warner Bros also inquired if he could be convinced to play Lex Luthor, who was eventually brought to life with scenery-devouring relish by Gene Hackman.
When that failed, the third and final carrot was dangled in front of him: come to the set for a few days, deliver some exposition as Superman’s father, Jor-El, and walk away with millions of dollars. It was an enticing amount of cash, but evidently not enough to make Newman abandon his principles.
Of course, despite trying his hardest to avoid being on-camera and pitching himself as a briefcase and sentient bagel, among other things, Brando’s lucrative contract netted him a $3.7 million salary and 11.75% of the profits, which amount to almost $20 million when Superman took flight at the box office and became the second highest-grossing release of 1978 behind Grease.
In an interview with Superman Homepage, producer Ilya Salkind recalled The Godfather icon’s hefty pay packet, saying, “Paul Newman found out later, and he almost had a heart attack.” While it’s unlikely he would have been paid as much as Brando, he wouldn’t have worked for chump change either.
The studio pushed the boat out to try and land Newman for Superman by offering him all three of the film’s most prominent male characters, and his accountant probably shed a tear or two when he waved off the notion of being a superhero, a villain, or a father figure in a questionable wig.
