Newman and actress Joanne Woodward were Hollywood’s golden couple. They were deeply in love, and it showed.
Newman was once quoted about how he stayed true to his wife for so long. “Why go eat out for a hamburger when you have steak at home?”
Death and Controversy
McQueen traveled to Mexico in 1980 in a last-ditch attempt to beat cancer. The procedure was controversial, and the doctor in Juarez even warned the actor not to do it. The surgery was an attempt to remove multiple large tumors from his body.
But, as the doctor told him would happen, he ended up dying during the procedure. He was 50-years old at the time.
The One-Sided Rivalry
According to several reports about how the men behaved when the cameras were turned off, Paul Newman was much different from Steve McQueen. While there were many negative stories about the way, McQueen treated his partners in relationships.
Newman was painted in an entirely different light, and he didn’t feel the jealousy over his fellow actor in the same way Steve felt about him.
The Meet-Cute
A meet-cute is something that happens at the beginning of any adorable romantic relationship when two people just stumble into a situation that forces them into meeting one another.
That’s exactly what happened to Newman and Woodward when they first met in a chance encounter.
On the Rise
Like many actors of his time, Newman served in the Navy during WWII in the Pacific theater. After the war was over, he got a BA in Drama and Economics and then studied at Yale’s School of Drama before heading out to try his hand at scoring jobs in Tinsel Town.
Initially, it didn’t go so well, but things would soon turn around.