Colourful characters: Paul Newman

They don’t make them like they used to, do they? When it comes to colourful characters in the film industry, few come close to Hollywood legend Paul Newman.

Few, if any actors, possessed the kind of charisma that the late, great Paul Newman conveyed with almost bewildering ease.  While his career was full of memorable roles that will stand the test of time, the man himself was as smooth as they come.

Having served his country by enrolling in the US Navy during World War 2, Newman spent the years after the war studying for a degree in English and Speech. After graduation he honed his craft as a thespian by touring with The Woodstock Players in the mid-west for a few months, but Paul Newman the actor wasn’t shaped until he moved to New York a few years later.

Studying with the legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg, he refined the movie star that Paul Newman would become by flexing his acting muscles under the watchful eye of a man responsible for the depth of talent of some of the greatest actors to ever grace the silver screen – Al Pacino, Marlon Brando and James Dean amongst them.

Before Jon Hamm made manly cool again by portraying the quiet intensity of Don Draper with an old school level of masculinity akin to Newman, movie stars were starting to get disconcertingly metrosexual. Two words: Orlando. Bloom. Here’s two more. Jude. Law.

Point is, if it wasn’t for the likes of Paul Newman, James Dean and Steve McQueen, then we wouldn’t have George Clooney or Tom Hardy. These guys trailblazed a certain level of screen magnetism that made it OK to be damn manly and proud of it.

Clooney always said that he didn’t wanna be a flash in the pan, he wanted career longevity and he looked at Paul Newman as a prime example of that – still doing stunning work into in his 70s.

That transition from desirable male movie star to credible actor is a tough one at the best of times; but Newman proved unequivocally with his superb work in the elongated sequel to The Hustler, The Colour of Money, that he still had it – and by “it” we mean everything. Genuinely going toe-to-toe for the affections of the females in the audience with a heartthrob decades his junior (Tom Cruise) who was donning the walls of girls everywhere at the time, he won an well-deserved Oscar for his work in the Martin Scorsese flick.

Steve McQueen was of a similar ilk; a man of a different time and with such an elevated state of cool that few actors since have managed to come close to. Nowadays who would you throw in with him? Ryan Gosling, maybe?

Granted, the Drive star has an intensely watchable screen presence, but he is far from obtaining the type of legacy that seems to grow for McQueen with each passing year. That said, he does have the time and certainly has the talent.

Marlon Brando is another one who seems to have a new, young actor compared to him every couple of years; a while ago it was Russell Crowe and for a brief period even Vince Vaughn, which is hard to believe now with his more overtly comedic sensibilities. The comparison with these younger actors seems to serve more as a reminder that they just don’t make them like they used to anymore; Brando in his prime was the epitome of magnetic.

There’s something classy about all of these guys; something that you can’t quite put your finger on, which is a compliment to the enigmatic leading men of yesterday who live on in legendary form.