The world will finally get to know the real Paul Newman — 14 years after his death.
“The Sting” actor’s recordings for a memoir have been discovered in his Connecticut home and will be released in 2022 by Knopf.
The beloved actor and philanthropist died in September 2008 at the age of 83 due to cancer.
The writings will be based on hours of audio featuring Newman speaking as well as interviews with friends and family.
“What he recorded, and in essence what he wrote, was so honest and revealing,” Peter Gethers, an editor-at-large at Knopf, told the New York Times. “It showed this extraordinary arc, a guy who was very, very flawed at the beginning of his life and as a young man, but who, as he got older, turned into the Paul Newman we want him to be.”
“He does not shy away from his demons, and the actor’s candor, is, by turns, stunning, smart, funny, self-critical, and tender,” Gethers said.
“He said that his mother did not so much think of him as flesh and blood, but as a decoration,” Gethers continued. “He says that if he was not a pretty child, she never would have paid attention to him at all. It’s a devastating thing to read, and clearly forms so much of his life and his insecurity about being an actor.”
The recordings contain interviews with Newman conducted by his friend, the late screenwriter Stewart Stern. The “Rebel Without a Cause” writer also talked with Newman’s wife of 50 years, the Joanne Woodward, their children, friends and peers.
The interviews were done about 10 years before the “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” actor’s passing. The book will also dive deep into Newman’s early life, troubled childhood and the painful death of his son, Scott, from barbiturate and alcohol poisoning.
“Because there had been so many unsolicited biographies and examinations of my work and my life, the record now has no bearing on truth at all,” Newman told Stern back in 1986. “I should probably at least make some truthful self-examination so the unsolicited biographies wouldn’t be considered as gospel.”