An Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man by Paul Newman

This first-person memoir began as taped conversations with his close friend and screenwriter Stewart Stern (Rebel Without a Cause) beginning in 1986, compiling the views of friends and family into an oral history. "This book came out of the struggle to try and explain it all to my kids. I want to leave some kind of record that sets things straight. Because what exists on the record now has no bearing at all on the truth."

Paul and his older brother grew up in a home with an austere mother and dissatisfied father. "As far as I can tell, I got no emotional support from anyone." It's no wonder they took to banging dents into the walls with their heads. Paul felt he wasn't natural at anything until, after wartime service, he found acting in college. As an actor at Yale Drama School, then Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio, he built a lifetime of chronic insecurity and doubts, feeling he was given a free pass. He claims he muddled through, but others saw him as driven to excel in the best parts. On Broadway, he premiered the new plays Picnic, The Desperate Hours, and Tennessee William's The Sweet Bird of Youth. Although he was already married, his love for Joanne Woodward began with Picnic in 1953. He had a son and two daughters with his first wife Jackie, and had three daughters with Joanne. He acknowledges the pressures of being children of stars and felt he had little understanding or patience. "Being a star throws everything out of whack for your kids."

His career in films took off and there input from friends and co-stars, including Joanne Woodward, Karl Malden (The Desperate Hours), Patricia Neal (Hud), Eva Marie Saint (Exodus), Piper Laurie (The Hustler), Martin Ritt (director of Hud and Hombre), Robert Altman (the neglected Quintet), Sidney Lumet (director of The Verdict) and George Roy Hill (director of The Sting, Slap Shot and Butch Cassidy and the Sunshine Kid - in which Paul was cast as Sundance with Steve McQueen as Butch).

I was surprised an actor of Paul's stature felt inhibited and painfully shy. With a deep preference for privacy and feeling awkward in interviews, this is rare honesty where he states his doubts. "I am faced with the appalling fact I don't know anything" and "Most people don't like me."

He also struggled with alcohol, drinking to a blackout state he called 'the click', enjoying the peace he found being dead drunk, and not feeling guilt because he didn't remember. In work, he was scared to be caught out fooling everyone and only remembers a few moments that worked. "You are convinced you emanate a certain light, of good or bad, but what others see is not the same light you think you are emanating."

This is not the glamour of Hollywood, but an in-depth and introspective memoir.

2022 / Hardcover / 320 pages