I'd been waiting for it to happen for ten years
Paul Newman, el hombre que el mundo conoció por sus ojos azules y su generosidad pública, cargó en silencio con las heridas de un padre distante, la culpa de sus propias traiciones y el peso insoportable de la muerte de su hijo. Una nueva biografía del crítico cinematográfico Shawn Levy revela que detrás del ícono hollywoodense habitaba un hombre convencido de que el universo le cobraba cada don recibido. Su historia es la de muchos que alcanzan la cima visible mientras se hunden en una oscuridad privada, recordándonos que la fama y la virtud pública rara vez curan las heridas más antiguas.
- Una biografía reciente desvela que el alcoholismo, la infidelidad y la distancia emocional definieron la vida privada de Newman tanto como su carisma definió su imagen pública.
- El rechazo de su padre en la infancia dejó una herida que Newman intentó tapar con el humor, la actuación y el alcohol, sin jamás lograrlo del todo.
- Su matrimonio con Joanne Woodward, construido sobre la traición a su primera esposa, no lo salvó de repetir el ciclo: una aventura de dieciocho meses con una periodista lo expuso como un hombre incapaz de sostenerse fiel incluso a su propia redención.
- Sus hijos absorbieron el costo de su ausencia emocional: su hija Susan casi muere por un trastorno alimentario severo, y su único hijo varón, Scott, murió de una sobredosis de drogas y alcohol.
- La muerte de Scott lo quebró de una manera que ningún premio ni causa filantrópica pudo reparar, y Newman se retiró del mundo público convertido en una sombra amarga del mito que había construido.
Paul Newman pasó gran parte de su vida intentando escapar de la decepción de su padre, un comerciante de Cleveland que nunca tomó en serio las ambiciones teatrales de su hijo menor. Newman era pequeño, objeto de burlas de su hermano mayor, y compensó desarrollando un humor afilado y una necesidad casi patológica de ser visto. Pero la herida no sanó. Cuando su padre murió mientras él luchaba como actor joven, con una esposa embarazada y una vida inestable, la culpa se volvió permanente: nunca había tenido la oportunidad de demostrar que valía.
El alcohol llegó pronto y nunca se fue del todo. Newman se casó con la actriz Jackie Witte y tuvieron tres hijos, pero el matrimonio se sentía como una trampa. Pasaba sus días en Manhattan trabajando y frecuentando a Joanne Woodward, una joven actriz. Cuando finalmente confesó que se había enamorado de ella, el divorcio fue brutal. Se casó con Joanne y construyeron una vida deliberadamente alejada de Hollywood, en Connecticut. Por un tiempo pareció una redención. Pero durante el rodaje de Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Newman tuvo una aventura de dieciocho meses con una periodista que finalmente lo abandonó diciéndole sin rodeos que siempre estaba borracho y que ni siquiera podía funcionar sexualmente. Lo describió como un hombre desgarrado entre el deseo de hacer lo correcto y la compulsión de escapar.
Sus hijos pagaron el precio de su distancia emocional. Su hija mayor, Susan, desarrolló un trastorno alimentario severo en la adolescencia y casi muere. Pero fue su único hijo varón, Scott, quien cargó con el peso más pesado. Rechazando el dinero de su padre, trabajó como conductor de autobús, leñador y albañil. Se hundió en las drogas y el alcohol, y una mañana, tras mezclar ron, cocaína y nueve pastillas de Valium, no despertó.
Newman quedó devastado pero no del todo sorprendido. Dijo que en cierto modo había estado esperando esa llamada durante diez años, y que lo que sintió fue, sobre todo, rabia: él y Scott habían perdido la capacidad de ayudarse mutuamente. Creó una fundación contra las adicciones, pero algo en él se había roto. Dejó de ir a estrenos, rechazó autógrafos y se ocultó detrás de sus gafas de sol. El hombre que había querido desesperadamente demostrar su valía terminó solo y amargado, famoso por su belleza y su talento, pero fundamentalmente incapaz de alcanzarse a sí mismo.
Paul Newman spent much of his life trying to escape the shadow of his father's disappointment, only to find himself repeating the same patterns of self-sabotage and emotional distance that had haunted his childhood. The actor who became a Hollywood icon—the man with the famous blue eyes, the race car driver, the philanthropist—was, according to a new biography by film critic Shawn Levy, a deeply conflicted person who believed the universe was exacting payment for every gift it had given him.
Newman's father, Arthur, ran a sporting goods store in Cleveland, Ohio, and had little use for his younger son's theatrical ambitions. The boy was small—barely five-foot-five and under 110 pounds—and became the target of relentless mockery from his older brother. He compensated by developing a sharp sense of humor and an almost pathological need to be noticed, once setting his own car on fire on campus just to get a laugh. But underneath the performance was a wound that never quite healed. "I don't think we ever really connected as father and son," Newman said years later. When his father died while Newman was struggling as a young actor with a pregnant wife and a difficult child, the guilt crystallized into something permanent. He had never gotten the chance to prove himself worthy.
The drinking started early and never really stopped. In the years after World War II, when Newman returned from service as a radioman and gunner on a torpedo bomber—a role he performed badly, by his own admission—he threw himself into theater and then into film with the desperation of someone running from something. He married Jackie Witte, an actress, and they had three children together. But the marriage felt like a trap. Newman spent his days and nights in Manhattan, working, auditioning, and increasingly spending time with Joanne Woodward, a young actress he had met at an agency. When he finally admitted to Jackie that he had fallen in love with Joanne, the divorce was brutal for everyone involved.
He married Joanne and they built a life deliberately far from Hollywood, in Connecticut, near a public school and a forest rather than in any fashionable enclave. For a time it seemed like redemption. But during the filming of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," Newman had an affair with Nancy Bacon, a divorced Hollywood journalist. The relationship lasted eighteen months. Bacon eventually left him, telling him bluntly that he was always drunk and couldn't even perform sexually. She described him as a thoughtless bastard, torn between his desire to do right and his compulsion to wander. When she told him she was getting married, Newman's response was characteristically hollow: "Great. Good luck. Hey, can we see each other a few more times before you do?"
Newman's children paid the price for his emotional unavailability. His oldest daughter, Susan, developed a severe eating disorder as a teenager, losing twenty kilos in a month in a desperate attempt to be thin enough to attract a teacher she had fixated on. She nearly died. But it was his only son, Scott, who bore the heaviest burden. As the sole male heir to the Newman name and fortune, Scott rejected his father's money entirely, working as a bus driver, a lumberjack, and a mason rather than accept a single cent. He turned to drugs and alcohol. He failed in school. And one morning, after mixing rum and cocaine and then taking nine Valium tablets for a nap, he didn't wake up.
Newman was devastated but not entirely surprised. "In a way, I'd been waiting for it to happen for ten years," he said. "And somehow my body had been developing an antidote. I felt a lot of things when I got that call, but mostly I was angry. Scott and I had lost the ability to help each other. I didn't know how to help him, and he didn't know how to help himself." He created a foundation to fight drug addiction, but something in him had broken. He stopped going to premieres, rarely attended the Academy Awards, refused to sign autographs. He hid behind sunglasses even when driving his modified Beetle. When a stranger once asked him to remove his glasses so she could see his famous eyes, he responded with barely concealed contempt: "I'll take mine off if you take your blouse off so I can see your breasts."
The man who had spent his life running from his father's judgment, who had tried so hard to be a good husband and father, who had wanted so desperately to prove his worth, ended up isolated and bitter—a myth of a man, famous for his beauty and his talent, but fundamentally alone.
Citações Notáveis
I don't think we ever really connected as father and son— Paul Newman, on his relationship with his father Arthur
Scott and I had lost the ability to help each other. I didn't know how to help him, and he didn't know how to help himself— Paul Newman, after his son's death
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why do you think Newman kept drinking even as it destroyed everything around him?
Because it was the only language he knew for the shame. His father never said he was proud of him, so Newman spent his life trying to earn approval he would never get. The alcohol was both the punishment and the escape from that punishment.
But he was successful. He had money, fame, a wife who loved him. Why wasn't that enough?
Because none of it came from his father. And by the time his father was dead, it was too late. The wound had already calcified. He couldn't believe he deserved any of it.
His son Scott—did Newman see himself in him?
Completely. Scott rejected the money, the name, everything, just like Paul had rejected his father's world. But Paul couldn't help his son the way he wished someone had helped him. The cycle just repeated.
So the foundation he created after Scott died—was that redemption?
It was an acknowledgment. But you can't redeem yourself from something like that. You can only live with it. And Newman chose to live with it alone, behind sunglasses, refusing to be looked at.