Paul Newman

Born: 26 January 1925
Where: Ohio, USA
Died: 26 September 2008

Hollywood mourned as legendary actor and icon Paul Newman lost his battle with lunch cancer in September 2008.

The film star and philanthropist landed just one acting Oscar - for The Colour of Money - after being nominated no less than nine times.

Memorable appearances have included Cool Hand Luke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Road to Perdition.

He is also famous for his charity work, particularly as the face of Newman's Own products, which began with salad dressing and expanded to include lemonade and popcorn.

The son of a Hungarian Christian Scientist and a Jewish-American shopkeeper, Newman served in the US Navy in the Pacific during World War II.

He completed his degree at Kenyon College after the war and later studied acting at Yale University and the Actors Studio in New York City.

While he was attending graduate school at Yale, he became a successful stage actor on Broadway.

His first movie - 1954's bibilical offering The Silver Chalice - has been described by Newman as the "worst movie of the entire 1950s".

However, he fared much better in his next effort - Somebody Up There Likes Me - in which he portrayed boxer Rocky Graziano.

He lande his first Oscar nomination as alcoholic ex-football player Brick Pollitt opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the 1958 drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

He went on to become one of the top box office draws of the 1960s, starring as "Fast" Eddie Helson in the pool playing drama The Hustler in 1961.

In 1963, he played a Nobel Prize-winning author in the mystery-thriller The Prize and convincingly played the rebel in the Western Hud.

He won critical plaudits as the prisoner who refused to conform in 1967's Cool Hand Look and delivered a legendary performance as Butch Cassidy opposite Robert Redford's Sundance Kid in 1969.

(Newman would go on to name his children's cancer charity The Hole in the Wall Gang after the outlaw gang featured in the movie).

Offscreen, he attracted the ire of the Nixon administration - he was 19th on the president's "enemies list" - for his political support of congressman Eugene McCarthy.

Newman also produced and directed many quality films, including Rachel, Rachel (1968) in which he directed wife Joanne Woodward and which received an Oscar nomination for best picture.

(married for Woodward for more than half a century, when asked why he never committed adultery he famously replied "Why fool around with hamburgers when you have steak at home?")

Nominated nine times for a best actor Oscar, he finally took one home for his performance as an aging pool shark in 1986's The Color of Money.

Subsequent appearances included The Hudsucker Proxy, Message in a Bottle and an Oscar-nominated appearance in Sam Mendes' The Road to Perdition.

His spaghetti sauces and salad dressings earn in excess of $100m for charity - he once quipped that it was embarrassing to see his dressings gross more than his movies.

A keen fan and participant of motorsport - he has finished second in the Le Mans 24 hour race - his recent work includes the voicing of the automobile Doc Hudson in the children's movie Cars.