Was mentioned in La Dolce Vita (1960), in a discussion about salaries paid to film stars.
Was named the #1 Box Office Star by Quigley Publications in its annual Top Ten Money Making Stars poll of movie exhibitors two years in a row, 1969 and 1970. Newman had been #2 in 1968 and #3 in '67 and would rank #3 in both 1971 and '74. Newman, who entered the list for the first time in 1963 at #9 and the last time in 1986 at #10, has made the list 17 times.
Was nominated 10 times for the Academy Award, including eight times as Best Actor, once as Best Supporting Actor, and once for Best Picture (the latter coming the same year he famously did not receive a Best Director nomination despite having won the then-equally prestigious New York Critics Award as Best Director for Rachel, Rachel (1968). In the acting field, the only actors with more nominations are Jack Nicholson with 12 nominations (8 Best Actor and 4 Best Supporting Actor nominations) and Laurence Olivier (nine Best Actor nominations and 1 Best Supporting Actor nod). On the distaff side, Bette Davis, who was nominated 10 times for an Academy Award, all of them Best Actress nods. Katharine Hepburn, with 12 nods (all in the Best Actress category) and Meryl Streep, with 15 nods have more acting nominations than Newman.
Was offered the role of "Judah Ben-Hur" in Ben-Hur (1959) but turned it down because he said he didn't have the legs to wear a tunic.
Was so ashamed of his debut in the failed costume drama The Silver Chalice (1954), that he took out an ad in Variety apologizing for his performance.
Was training to be a pilot while in the Navy, but was discovered to be color-blind, ending his flying aspirations.
When Newman failed to receive an Oscar nomination for his performance in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), producer Charles Schnee and director Robert Wise gave him what they called a "Noscar." The engraving says, "The Schnee-Wise Noscar award to Paul Newman for best portraying a terrible no-good, for turning him into a charming and lovable sprite, and for thereby doing what Lincoln said should never be done, i.e. fooling all of the people all of the time".
When Premiere Magazine does a list of 24 Great Performances from each year, they often ask the actors who their idols are. Newman has been the most frequently cited idol so far.
While campaigning for the Democrats in the 1968 U.S. Presidential election, Newman would rent a Jaguar on the weekends. When he found out that opponent Richard Nixon , who was known to his naysayers as "Tricky Dick", was renting the same car during the week, Newman left a note in it saying "This clutch is tricky, so you won't have any trouble with it.".
Within a space of five months in 2003, he was nominated for an Oscar (for Road to Perdition (2002)), a Tony (for "Our Town") and an Emmy (for Our Town (2003) (TV)).