“I found it very vivid and invigorating”: the unlikely role that presented Paul Newman with a brand new challenge
Even when actors have worked alongside the most exciting directors or taken on the most unique roles, the most rewarding career challenges can come from the most unlikely of places. Nowhere is this more true than with Paul Newman.
Starring in over 50 films, directing a handful and working with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Robert Redford and Elizabeth Taylor, Newman surely had a number of roles that would provide an exciting and invigorating challenge. Yet, it was none of these experiences that presented him with the kind of brand-new challenge that invigorates an actor.
Newman even went on to win several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing after becoming enamoured with the sport while training for his role in Winning. This surely would present an actor with an entirely new type of experience and challenge, but clearly, this was not as exciting as his voice-acting role in the iconic Pixar film Cars.
Yes, you read that right, it was his role as Doc Hudson in Cars that proved to be the fun new challenge that brought Newman to the screen – or at least to the speakers – for the first time in four years at the age of 81. Lending his voice to the suave and experienced animated 1951 Hudson Hornet who runs the Route 66 town Radiator Springs, Newman put his knowledge of Nascar racing to excellent use.
Along with Marlon Brando, Newman was known as one of the first actors to bring method acting to the big screen. When asked during the promotional tour for Cars if he brought this approach to his role, he said, “All of the physical stuff that you work on as an actor, you just throw away. So this was, I would say, relatively easy.”
Yet, where this might have bored some actors, Newman stated that he found voice acting “very vivid and invigorating” because of its adaptability – after all, there are no physical constraints on voice work. Newman said he enjoyed that if you didn’t like how you’d delivered a line, you could “just jump on it and do it 60 different ways… This way is wonderful because you can just keep improvising and improving on it or making it completely different or changing words… You just have a lot more freedom.”
Clearly, Newman’s approach to this role paid off as the film went on to boast the highest-grossing opening weekend of any car-related film for three years, bypassing even Newman’s early work in Winning. The film also proved to be Newman’s last role before retiring in 2007 and his death in 2008, although he did get a posthumous credit for Cars 3, in which archive recordings were used for one last appearance from the late, great Doc Hudson.
And while the film had an unexpected effect on Newman, he knew from the beginning that it would do well, stating that the reason he took the part was due to John Lasseter’s directing and his fondness for prior Pixar films. Newman left his mark on the future franchise with his death – and therefore the death of his character – even being memorialised with the fictional Piston Cup Racing Series being renamed the Hudson Hornet Piston Cup after his iconic character.
