If you ask the Fundermentalist, the characters that Paul Newman has played onscreen have had some of movie lore’s greatest nicknames: “Cool Hand” Luke, “Fast” Eddie Felson, Reggie “Reg” Dunlop, “Butch” Cassidy and Henry Gondorff.
But maybe it’s time to bestow a nickname upon the real-life Newman: “Nice Guy” Newman.
According to FoxNews, Newman gave away to charity some $120 million between 2005-2006, when he passed his entire ownership stake in the food purveyor Newman’s Own, to the Newman’s Own Foundation.
Fox reports:
According to Newman’s Own federal tax filing for 2006, the actor personally gave away $8,746,500 to a variety of groups that support children, hurricane relief in the Gulf Coast, education and the arts.
Some of Newman’s recipients are well-known: He gave Rosie O’Donnell’s children’s program $5,000 and even donated $25,000 to his pal Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. But most of them are for the kinds of programs that we never hear about, the kind that simply keep people alive.
The report also talks briefly about Newman’s battle with lung cancer, but assures us that Newman is not giving away his fortune because he believes he is dying.
In other news, according to the same report, Steven Spielberg gave George Lucas a $2,500 Sony OLED mini-TV for his birthday.
