Paul Newman's Humble Admission About Hollywood's Greatest Actor
The legendary star credited luck for his success and openly acknowledged one performer he could never match, revealing surprising insights about talent and timing in Hollywood's golden age.
Paul Newman reached Hollywood's summit through a blend of striking looks, effortless charisma, commanding screen presence, and genuine talent. Yet the legendary actor viewed himself primarily as fortunate rather than gifted. He attributed his remarkable career—spanning decades of critical praise, major awards, and consistent box office success—to what he called 'Newman's Luck,' his personal term for the series of breaks that transformed him from a late-1940s stage performer into a mid-1960s A-list movie star.
A Career Built on Tragedy
While Newman's modest assessment carried typical self-effacement, it held truth. In Hollywood's harsh reality, perhaps no actor gained more from James Dean's untimely death than Newman did. The two men knew each other casually, belonged to the same generation, and regularly competed for identical roles. When the Rebel Without a Cause icon died tragically, opportunities opened for Newman to seize his breakthrough moment.
Dean's death elevated Newman to the starring role in a live staging of Ernest Hemingway's The Battler. More significantly, Dean had been the top pick to portray Rocky Graziano in Robert Wise's Somebody Up There Likes Me. This pivotal film became Newman's first major leading role and helped erase memories of his disappointing debut in The Silver Chalice. Though Newman might have achieved stardom regardless, Dean's passing created fortunate circumstances from devastating tragedy.
The Brando Comparison
Another rising talent of the 1950s who frequently competed with Dean for parts was Marlon Brando, who quickly dominated the acting landscape. The industry had never witnessed anything comparable to Brando's raw power. As method actors trained under Lee Strasberg, both possessing rugged good looks and favoring naturalistic approaches, Brando and Newman inevitably faced constant comparisons—particularly since less than a year separated their ages.
Despite their surface similarities, they represented distinctly different talents. While the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid star resented these comparisons, he recognized his unique qualities and understood he lacked Brando's instinctive, unrestrained, almost primal intensity that seemed perpetually on the verge of explosion.
Acknowledging Superior Talent
When discussing the Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront legend's abilities, Newman recognized an area where competition was impossible. "It's his ability to burn like a volcano that is about to explode," he explained to Oriana Fallaci. "It's being Brando and only Brando, which is to say the best actor that we have in the US, and to remain Brando."
Newman elaborated on their fundamental differences: "I'm not always myself. If I play a cowboy, I'm a cowboy. If I play a surgeon, I'm a surgeon. And if I play a gigolo, I'm a gigolo. When people watch Brando instead, they watch Brando playing the cowboy, the surgeon, the gigolo. As for our physical resemblance: there's nothing I can do about it. I can just let my beard grow." He attempted the beard once, but his wife Joanne Woodward despised it.