Newman's often traumatic childhood is brilliantly detailed. He talks about his teenage insecurities, his early failures with women, his rise to stardom, his early rivals (Brando and Dean), his first marriage, his drinking, his philanthropy, the death of his son Scott, his strong desire for his daughters to know and understand the truth about their father. Perhaps the most moving material in the book centers around his relationship with Joanne Woodward - their love for each other, his dependence on her, the way she shaped him intellectually, emotionally and sexually. Newman at his best...with his self-aware persona, storied marriage and generous charitable activities...this rich book somehow imbues his characters' pain and joy with fresh technicolor." -- The Wall Street Journal Newman was predisposed to addiction and alcohol. He compensated his drinking with physical fitness and long saunas. THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF AN ORDINARY MAN is revelatory and introspective, personal and analytical, loving and tender in some places, always complex and profound.

To say he was an extraordinary man would be an understatement. he saw himself as a working actor, not a movie star, and insisted that everyone else did the same. There was no ego, no entourage, no hangers on. Only Paul, his script and his incredible spirit. One can say this about very few people, but he was a truly great man. It seems to me to be one of the great 20th-century lives: he was famously generous, with his extraordinary and unstinting work for his charities, he was a shining example of how to use global fame for the greater good, and most of all he was one of the great movie actors of this or any other age. [Directing Newman] was the highlight of my professional life.' Sam Mendes The memoir is not the result of Paul Newman sitting down at a keyboard and typing out his personal history. The book is assembled from five years’ worth of interviews that the actor gave, between 1986 and 1991, to Stewart Stern, the screenwriter (“Rebel Without a Cause”) and a close friend. One of the very finest screen actors of our time. Newman spanned the gap between the golden days of Hollywood, the 40s and 50s with actors like Cary Grant and James Stewart and Clark Gable, and the present lot represented by Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise' Sir Michael Parkinson Beginning with a scene of himself seated on a couch in his library where, Newman says, “I just smoked a joint and remembered with absolute clarity the whole map of my boyhood hometown,” he recounts his upbringing in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Newman’s father helped run the family’s sporting-goods company, drank heavily and seemed uninterested in his children. His mother, by contrast, practically fetishized him, and Newman compares himself to one of her dogs “who became cancerous and so obese they could hardly move, and my mother would keep feeding them chocolates until she killed them with kindness.”

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Memoir is loosely applied here. This is the transcript of a recorded series of conversations between Paul Newman and screenwriter friend Stewart Stern in the late 80s- early 90s that two of Newman's daughters published years after their father's death, with added bits and pieces from other friends, family and industry colleagues to round out the anecdotes and memories. In this way, it is mostly Newman's own words, but it's impossible to know if this is how he would have chosen to present his story and his voice. The one thing I’ve always admired is excellence. I recognize it in almost anything: plumbers, museum guides, limousine drivers, bank tellers—I delight in seeing it. Maybe we choose those arenas in which we have the best chance for excellence. For me, maybe that’s acting, or being somehow connected to the theater, or capitalizing on the way I look, or fooling people” Melissa Newman said that they considered withholding her father’s reflections on Scott from the book, but decided “it was time for it.” also a director, race car driver, husband, father, philanthropist, (went further than most actors), business owner of a non-profit ‘Newman’s Own’ (salad dressings, etc.), struggled with alcohol, was often lonely, a private man who needed to have a lot of people around him….. I was glad to get an inside look at an amazing actor who was a flawed human being who managed to make it to the top in Hollywood – one of the hardest places to make it at all.

Then all this was put together for a book about Paul Newman, contributions and stories from his co-stars and directors. The ultimate cool guy, who men wanted to be like and women adored. He was an American icon, a brilliant actor, a Renaissance man and a generous but modest philanthropist ... Newman entertained millions in some of Hollywood's most memorable roles ever, and brightened the lives of amny more, especially seriously ill children, through his charitable works.' Arnold Schwarzenegger In 1986, Paul Newman and his closest friend, screenwriter Stewart Stern, began an extraordinary project. Stuart was to compile an oral history, to have Newman's family and friends and those who worked closely with him, talk about the actor's life. And then Newman would work with Stewart and give his side of the story. The only stipulation was that anyone who spoke on the record had to be completely honest. That same stipulation applied to Newman himself. The project lasted five years. Newman's often traumatic childhood is detailed. He talks about his teenage insecurities, his early failures with women, his rise to stardom, his early rivals (Brando and Dean), his first marriage, his drinking, his philanthropy, the death of his son Scott, his strong desire for his daughters to know and understand the truth about their father. Perhaps the most moving material in the book centers around his relationship with Joanne Woodward - their love for each other, his dependence on her, the way she shaped him intellectually, emotionally and sexually.

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The vulnerability that Newman reveals in the book is astonishing even to people who knew him intimately. “I thought he was Superman, until my early 20s and even after that,” said Clea Newman Soderlund, the youngest of the actor’s five daughters. Though she was familiar with many of the stories her father shares, she said, “I definitely didn’t know how complex and how traumatizing they were for him.” A stint in the U.S. Navy flying as a radioman gunner during World War II put some meat on Newman’s bones — he grew 5 inches to 5-foot-10 — and forced some maturity on him. The service also gave Newman ample opportunity for some serious boozing and tomfoolery, neither helping him overcome his belief that he was a poser. And that was the least of it. The Sully of my novel was based on my father, who was absent during much of my young life (as Paul apparently was through much of his son’s). He became interested in me when I was old enough to occupy the bar stool next to his. It was only during the years when I returned home from college to work summer road construction that we became close. When he died, I was stunned by the size of the hole his absence left in my life.