There are those who celebrate birthdays by blowing out candles and singing the usual tune. Others prefer cake, a toast or some flowers. But, how to celebrate a birthday like  Paul Newman’s, an actor’s actor, a family man, and a human being deeply involved in improving the world he lived in? Someone who gave his best work to Hollywood but preserved his private life with the same tenacity? Whose presence not only made the camera fall in love with him but also changed the industry and even the entire world thanks to his many humanitarian contributions? His penetrating blue eyes closed for good in 2008. He was 83 and left behind a career as long as it was diverse. But we want to celebrate the day he was born, January 26th. And our colleague Juliette Michaud has arranged the perfect gift — a book she wrote titled, of course, “Paul Newman.”

Published in September 2021 by Editions de la Martiniere, it is the perfect companion to a documentary broadcast by the OCS network about one of the greatest legends of the seventh art, the man behind great timeless classics such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Towering Inferno o The Color of Money and a legend even for the youngest audience members as the voice of Doc Hudson in the animated film Cars.

“Paul Newman” is the perfect way to say happy birthday to the actor and is written by Michaud with love and the knowledge that she gathered by meeting the legend in person during her tenure as a correspondent in Los Angeles for the French film magazine ‘Studio Magazine’ and as a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) for more than 20 years. In fact, Newman was a Golden Globe nominee 16 times, and a seven-time winner, not only as an actor but also as a director and producer, as well as the recipient of a Cecil B. deMille Award for all his achievements in 1984.

The book starts with an exceptional preface penned by Charlotte Rampling, who co-starred with Newman in Sidney Lumet‘s The Verdict.  “Isn’t it more difficult to write or talk about those we love?” she wonders before opting for simplicity as she talks about a man who loved precisely that. She describes her first meeting with Newman as a man of few words and very concerned about the work. His sets were frequently visited by his wife, Joanne Woodward, “with whom I could talk about the vinaigrette, about everything and anything.” She calls him a “magnificently beautiful” star, a great actor, and a great person, his humility his standout trait.

Besides Rampling, the book features the words of  Jacqueline Bisset, Sébastien Bourdais, Thierry Frémaux, Tom Hanks, Piper Laurie y Sophia Loren, among others, interviewed for the occasion by Michaud.  In addition to the testimony of Newman and his wife, Michaud includes tributes from  Robert Benton, Sam Mendes, Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, Martin Scorsese, and Kyra Sedgwick  from her personal files or from the HFPA archives.

There is much more documentation broken down into the chapters that follow, almost chronologically, the life of someone who will live forever on our screens.

The chapter “Sweet Bird of Youth” describes his beginnings in his native Ohio where Paul Leonard Newman already showed an interest in acting, a dream that he put on hold to join the army during World War II.

In ‘Actors Studio,’ the chapter needs no more introduction than its title, where we see Newman as a principal interpreter of the artistic revolution led by Lee Strasberg that created some of the greatest actors in film history, including Marlon Brando and James Dean.

With each new chapter, from ‘The Cult Years’ to ‘Behind the Camera,’ passing through ‘New Era,’ ‘The Champion,’ ‘Paul Newman’s Salsa Western’ or ‘The Magic Hours,’ Michaud unravels a different stage in a film career that shone brightly in all genres from the 1950s until Newman’s death. But there is one chapter in particular that says it all with two names: ‘Paul and Joanne.’ It was a love story that lasted 50 years and gave the world three daughters, a joint career of 10 titles –The Long, Hot Summer, Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!, From the Terrace, Paris Blues, A New Kind of Love, Winning, WUSA, The Drowning Pool, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, and  Empire Falls– plus those where Newman was behind the camera directing his muse in five other movies — Rachel, RachelThe Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon MarigoldsThe Shadow BoxHarry & Son, and The Glass Menagerie.

Michaud is not the only one these days who is focusing on the legend that gave so much to the cinema. Ethan Hawke is preparing a documentary on Newman that will be released this year. Titled The Last Movie Stars, the documentary will reveal in six episodes the fascinating relationship between Newman and Woodward, one of the most powerful couples in Hollywood, always slightly removed from the industry and the city that made them stars. Produced by Martin Scorsese, the documentary miniseries was a request from Newman’s daughters to Hawke before the pandemic.

Another love letter to Newman will be the one that the actor wrote himself before his passing. The memoir that was never finished is now in the hands of the publishing house Knopf which plans to publish the book in the fall of 2022. Tired of unofficial versions and rumors about his private life, Newman opted to tell his own story during several interviews with Stewart Stern on tapes that were unearthed from the basement of the family home. New interviews with friends and family will be added to what Newman left to complete the ultimate view on one of the few Hollywood good men.

Martin Scorsese said once that he could not think about cinema without thinking of Paul Newman. Michaud tries to make his absence more bearable by remembering in “Paul Newman” the man, the star, the father, the benefactor. “I had in front of me one of the greatest actors, one of the legends of Hollywood. But, also, a human being of mythic proportions. More than his beauty, it was his kindness that made him a giant,” she sums up in her book.