- Paul Newman credits his wife Joanne Woodward for making him a sex symbol.
- "Joanne gave birth to a sexual creature," Newman wrote in his posthumous memoir.
Paul Newman might have been one of Hollywood's biggest sex symbols in the 1960s thanks to his toned body and piercing blue eyes, but he credits that whole image to his wife, Joanne Woodward.
"Joanne gave birth to a sexual creature," Newman wrote in his posthumous memoir "Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man." "We left a trail of lust all over the place. Hotels and public parks and Hertz Rent-A-Cars."
Newman made this reflection in the 1980s when he and his closest friends decided to do a series of interviews for a memoir on himself, which is finally coming out 14 years after his death in 2008.
In the book, Newman and Woodward don't hold back on their red-hot love for one another.
Newman said growing up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, "girls thought I was a joke," but that changed when he met fellow actor Woodward in the 1950s (they married in 1958).
"I went from being not much of a sexual threat to something else entirely," he said in an excerpt from the book released by People.
In the book, the Oscar-winner details coming home one night to find that Woodward had made up a room off their master bedroom with a "thrift shop double bed.""'I call it the Fuck Hut,' she said proudly," Newman wrote in the book. "It had been done with such affection and delight. Even if my kids came over, we'd go into the Fuck Hut several nights a week and just be intimate and noisy and ribald."
The interviews from long ago were first featured in the Ethan Hawke six-part HBO Max docuseries "The Last Movie Stars," in which Hawke also examined the close relationship Newman and Woodward had.
"They each took turns being the gardener and the rose," Hawke told Insider. "He says, 'She made up the sex symbol me.' He didn't believe in himself until he was married to her. He worshiped her as an artist and she loved and believed in him. They balanced each other in a way that I find really inspiring."
Newman and Woodward were married for 50 years until Newman's death in 2008. Woodward, 92, has been living with Alzheimer's disease for years.
"Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Man" is out Oct. 18.