NEWMAN'S OWN. Paul Newman has passed after a long and productive life, and his philanthropies and political activism are as worthy of celebration as his titanic film career, if not more so.

What stands out for me about Newman on screen was his knack for revealing the intelligence of characters who were not always book-smart. Actors like Brando or DeNiro would submerge themselves into incoherent characters, and let their brutal energy carry them; even when playing Rocky Graziano or the young Fast Eddie or Cool Hand Luke, Newman made a point of showing the wheels turning in their minds, and it may be that his anti-heroes were so popular because he made them appear reasonable. (Played another way, Luke's will might have looked like a tragically uncontrollable force, but Newman's Luke had made friends with his own rebelliousness, which invited others to make friends with it, too.)

Of course those characters were also charming, because Newman had charm, buckets of it. That part came effortlessly, but I never noticed him coasting on it. At worst (e.g. the end of The Towering Inferno), he sometimes used it to rescue scenes that had no other hope of salvation.

In fact, in my favorite Newman performances -- Nobody's Fool and The Verdict -- he played the trick of submerging his charm early on and letting it creep out as the character made progress. The beginning of The Verdict is so brutal because you see a Paul Newman who has lost his charm, squandered his gifts and become a miserable legal grifter, surviving on the vestiges of his good manners and skills. His pursuit of a hard, righteous cause is genuinely thrilling because you can see that accepting it hasn't turned him into a superman -- he makes foolish mistakes and actually has a humiliating panic attack when Charlotte Rampling strikes at his still-soft center -- but has forced him into the confrontation with himself that he's been avoiding his whole life. Once again Paul Newman has walked into harm's way, but not breezily, and with everything on the line. In his quietly amazing summation ("Act as if ye had faith, and faith will be given to you") he is both reduced to his humblest essence and ennobled.

Imagine some other stars in the role. There have been many actors who, like Newman, could seduce the audience just by presenting themselves to it, but few who could at any stage of their careers draw us into a journey like that. He really was more than just a pretty face.