Meet the author: Melissa Newman on her father Paul’s posthumous memoir

Fourteen years after the death of her Hollywood legend father, Paul Newman, Melissa Newman keeps him close to her heart. Indeed, her T-shirt is etched with the face of the Hollywood icon.

She says of the morning he died in 2008, at home in Connecticut: “The world stopped. There was the inevitable confusion and chaos to be dealt with, and the fog of grief.”

Even today, she finds it difficult to watch him in movies such as Cool Hand Luke, The Color Of Money (for which he won an Oscar), The Sting, The Verdict and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid.

Promoting his posthumous memoir, Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life Of An Ordinary Man, she reveals the family found unpublished interviews and transcripts spanning three decades in his basement more than a decade after the former heartthrob died from lung cancer aged 83.

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The book is based on Newman’s transcripts as well as interviews and oral histories between 1986-91 conducted by the actor’s close friend, screenwriter Stewart Stern, whose works included Rebel Without A Cause. And it reveals that despite his talent and good looks Newman – who was also a racing car driver and philanthropist who gave millions of dollars to good causes – was plagued by insecurity.

A mixture of the actor’s narrative and Stern’s interviews with contributors on their recollections of him, the memoir charts Newman’s difficult relationship with his parents, his first marriage to actress Jackie Witte, with whom he had three children, his long-time affair and subsequent 50-year marriage to Woodward, with whom he also had three children, the loss of his first child Scott from a drugs overdose in 1978, and his own alcoholism.

He writes of his son’s death: “There was a time, long before he died, that I thought the only way I could free Scott to go his own way would be to shoot myself. Then that pressure would be off his chest, and he could go someplace and maybe get rid of the affliction that was me, and become a whole person.”

Artist, singer and former actress Melissa, 61, the result of Newman’s second marriage to Woodward – to whom she bears a striking resemblance – says the tough decision to publish the material was made so that their parents would not be forgotten.

Of her shy father, who it is revealed was constantly battling “imposter syndrome”, she says: “The hardest thing was listening to him struggle, finding his identity as an artist under incredibly weird circumstances. He had a beautiful face. He wanted to be an actor – my mum wanted to be a star – and for a lot of people who just want to be actors, especially if you’re cast in this role as the quintessential leading man, it’s very frustrating.

“There was something fragile about him and I used to cry about him a lot, even when he was still alive. I imagined what it would be like when he was gone.”

“Here was someone who suspected himself an imposter, an ordinary man with an extraordinary face and luck on his side, achieving far beyond what he’d set out to do,” she adds in her foreword.

And she says: “I hope the book encourages more people to watch his films.”

Melissa Newman – Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life Of An Ordinary Man, Century, £25.