He achieved what his peers found impossible

He was an ambitious, intellectual actor and achieved what most of his peers find impossible 8212; remaining a major star into a craggy, charismatic old age even as he redefined himself as more than Hollywood star. He raced cars, opened summer camps for ailing children and became a non-profit entrepreneur with a line of foods.

Newman made his Hollywood debut in the 1954 film The Silver Chalice, but real stardom arrived a year and a half later, when he inherited from James Dean the role of the boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me.

It was a rapid rise for Newman, but being taken seriously as an actor took longer. He was almost undone by his star power, his classic good looks and, most of all, his brilliant blue eyes. 8220;I picture my epitaph,8221; he once said.

Newman8217;s filmography was a cavalcade of flawed heroes and winning antiheroes stretching over decades. In 1958, he was a drifting confident man determined to marry a Southern belle in an adaptation of The Long, Hot Summer.

And in 2002, at 77, he was affably deadly as Tom Hanks8217;s gangster boss in Road to Perdition. As Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969 he was the most amiable and antic of bank robbers, memorably paired with Robert Redford. And in The Hustler 1961 he was the small-time pool shark Fast Eddie, a role he recreated 25 years later in The Colour of Money 1986.

That performance, alongside Tom Cruise, brought Newman his sole Academy Award, for best actor, after he had been nominated for that prize six times. In all, he received eight Oscar nominations for best actor and one for best supporting actor, in Road to Perdition.

The movies were never enough for him. He became a successful racecar driver, even competing at Daytona in 1995 as a 70th birthday present to himself. He made it to the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest winner in his race class.

In 1982, he decided to sell a salad dressing he had created and bottled for friends at Christmas. Thus was born the Newman8217;s Own brand, an enterprise he started with his friend A E Hotchner, the writer. All its profits, of more than 200 million, have been donated to charity, the company says.

Much of the money was used to create a string of Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, named for the outlaw gang in Butch Cassidy. The camps provide free summer recreation for children with cancer and other serious illnesses.

On November 28, 1978, Scott Newman, his oldest child died at 28 of an overdose of alcohol and pills. His father8217;s monument to him was the Scott Newman Centre, created to publicise the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

Newman8217;s three younger daughters are the children of his 50-year second marriage, to actress Joanne Woodward. Newman and Woodward were cast in the Broadway play Picnic in 1953. Starting with The Long, Hot Summer in 1958, they co-starred in 10 movies.

In an industry in which long marriages might be defined as those that last beyond the first year and the first infidelity, Newman and Woodward8217;s was striking for its endurance. Newman told Playboy magazine, in an often-repeated quotation about marital fidelity, 8220;I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?8221;

Newman was saddled for years with an image of being a 8220;pretty boy8221; lightweight.

8220;Paul suffered a little bit from being so handsome 8212; people doubted just how well he could act,8221; director Arthur Penn told the authors of the 1988 book Paul and Joanne.

A politically active liberal Democrat, Newman was a Eugene McCarthy delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention and appointed by President Jimmy Carter to a UN General Assembly session on disarmament. He expressed pride at being on President Richard M Nixon8217;s enemies list.