Newman's Best?

This is certainly one of his best performances in one of his best and probably most underrated movies. I still think his performance in THE VERDICT is his best but this one is up there.

- The Verdict
- Nobody's Fool
- Cool Hand Luke
- The Color of Money
- The Road to Perdition
- Hud
- Absence of Malice
- The Hustler
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

IMO, he got much better as he got older. Even Newman once stated that didn't really consider much of his work to be any good, until the 1980's.

Well said.

This is one of his more underrated performances. It's one of my favorite Newman movies.

myndchanger:I too don't "know" that this was his best, but I do "believe" it was.
I did appreciate your Strasburg and Brando references. Newman and Tracy, hmm. As one who sees no need to sexually differentiate actors, my best would be Newman and Streep.
I have noted several claims of others as to Hud and The Verdict as being his greatest and while I would not belittle his performance in either, I am of the firm opinion that his performance in Hud was greatly enhanced by the magnificent one of Patricia Neal and as far as The Verdict, a picture of many shortcomings is concerned, I believe that the best thing he did here was to successfully play a drunk, something not difficult to be, but oh so difficult to convincingly portray as he did.

I tend toward believing that Paul Newman never had a "best" just because he always kept getting better. His best was probably still to come but age and a need to spend time with his family finally forced him to stop. My two greatest are Spencer Tracy and Paul Newman. They could do comedy, drama-whatever and kept learning all their lives.