Paul Newman: Joanne Woodward Turned Me Into 'Sexual Creature'

Paul Newman, widely regarded as a sex symbol, credits his second wife, Joanne Woodward, for turning him into "a sexual creature."

"We left a trail of lust all over the place. Hotels and public parks and Hertz Rent-A-Cars," the late actor, famous for roles in classics including "Hud," "Cool Hand Luke," and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," revealed in one of many intimate stories told in his posthumous memoir, "Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Man," excerpted in this week's People. 

The new book, based on long-lost interviews that have since been located, paints the picture of an insecure adolescent from Shaker Heights, Ohio, who had no confidence — especially with women. 

"I felt like a freak," he says. "Girls thought I was a joke. A happy buffoon."

That all changed when he met Woodward in 1953. 

"I went from being not much of a sexual threat to something else entirely," recounts Newman, who died in 2008.

At the time he was married to Jackie Witte, with whom he shared three kids: Scott, Susan, and Stephanie. However, drawn to Woodward, they began an affair that Newman describes as "brutal in my detachment from my family." 

By 1958, Newman and Witte were divorced, and shortly after, Newman married Woodward. Their passion was strong, as Newman explains while describing coming home one night to find Woodward had set up a room off the master bedroom of their Beverly Hills home with a "thriftshop double bed" and a coat of fresh paint.

"'I call it the F*** Hut,' she said proudly," Newman recalled Woodward saying. "It had been done with such affection and delight. Even if my kids came over, we'd go into the F*** Hut several nights a week and just be intimate and noisy and ribald."

Newman and Woodward shared three daughters: Nell, Melissa, and Clea. For a brief time things seemed to go well, but it inevitably grew complicated, mostly because of Newman's heavy drinking. 

"Joanne and I still drive each other crazy in different ways," recounts Newman in the book. "But all the misdemeanors, the betrayals, the difficulties have kind of evened themselves out over the years."

Their daughter, Clea, notes that while her parents fought in a "dramatic" way, they also "fought really hard to stay together."

"They didn't walk," she adds. "There were times it was pretty close but they worked hard at it. Ultimately they came together."

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