The Oscar-winning 1976 role Paul Newman was begged to play: “You can have any part”

The Oscar-winning 1976 role Paul Newman was begged to play: “You can have any part”By the time he finally won his long-awaited Academy Award, Paul Newman was under the impression that the opportunity had passed him by, especially when he’d been given an honorary prize the year before. Newman made a mockery of the notion, right enough, but he could have done it a decade earlier. Meanwhile, her husband had gone home empty-handed seven times before Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money finally landed him the big one. Had screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, who also won an Oscar for his script, gotten his way, though, it would have been Newman losing his cool in that unforgettable moment. “All other factors remaining constant, Sidney Lumet will probably direct this picture,” Chayefsky wrote Newman in May 1975.