Smash hit

It is easy to forget how his glowering eyes and razor-sharp cheekbones electrified audiences. He now concedes Road to Perdition could have been his last flick. “I may have one or two movies left in me,” he says doubtfully, “but I can’t remember lines now.” Indeed, he buries his head in his hands when he forgets simple words.

But Newman is not one to snooze by the fire waiting for the grim reaper. “I have a wonderful friend who says, ‘You have to take time out to be old’.” He snorts at the absurdity. “I’m still full of piss and vinegar,” he smiles.

When not running what he calls his “salad dressing business” (it has more than 70 products) or drawing up hitherto secret plans to open his own restaurant, or running a racing car team, he is helping his wife, the actress Joanne Woodward, run a theatre, which “takes all my wife’s time and too much of mine”.

Actors smart over the roles that got away, but Newman regrets taking too many. “I only learnt five years ago that less is more. I could have been more selective. I was lucky to survive my first film, The Silver Chalice — God, what a dog — the worst film of the Fifties.” In a remark that betrays rather more interest in money than he admits at Democratic rallies, he blames 1970s taxation: “It was 91%, so you had to work pretty hard.”

As the snapper clicks away, passing women squeal: it must be wearisome being his wife of 46 years. It was one thing being married to the planet’s sexiest sexagenarian but it must be hard to accept her old man is still going to be ogled as an octogenarian. “Oh, she has her own fan base,” he smiles. They have three daughters; he also had two children from a first, brief marriage but his only son died of a drugs overdose, the one off-limits subject.

In a week when it is revealed our island is cluttered with divorcées in their twenties, it fills one with nostalgia to find a 79-year-old who is still happily married. Forget salad dressing, what is Newman’s recipe for marital survival?

“Affection,” he says after a long pause, before smirking. “That allows us to yell at each other a lot.” But presumably they only yell about the small things? “Oh no, we yell at the big things. Nothing is off limits.” He is relaxed about his image, shooing away the make-up girl. “I burnt my tuxedo on my 70th birthday. When women ask me to take my glasses off so they can see my eyes I tell them that causes my pants to fall down. That usually frightens them off.”

Newman is dressed in woolly jumper and trainers; time as well as neglect has inflicted its ravages, but when nature has bestowed so much beauty, its bearer can afford to wear a few wrinkles. How does he feel about his 80th?

“It’s only a number,” he shrugs. “I have a great metabolism and as far as I know a good heart. I still run up and down stairs and race cars.” Indeed, he was the first 70- year-old to win the Daytona 24- hour race. “When I have a dismal week . . . I get in a car and just feel the venom run out of my toes.” Seeing young rivals in his rear-view mirror must be life- enhancing, too.

As he relaxes he allows his dark glasses to fall further down his face, affording a view of those eyes. But whenever the snapper appears, back the glasses go: he blames a condition that makes him sensitive to light, but perhaps if even your eyes are regarded as public property, this is how you maintain some privacy. Though he occasionally drifts out of sentences, he is still precise and witty.

He reveals he has started writing an “unauthorised autobiography”, and remarks that, as well as old “war buddies”, it might be fun to interview ex-girlfriends. He talks of quality testing at Newman’s Own but it could be of Newman himself: “nothing slips under my radar”. The one time the Sting star was almost stung was by the late Duke of Manchester, who nearly robbed him of $200,000 for a non-existent children’s camp.

Newman flew to London with “sniggly thoughts about becoming Sir Paul”, and being able to style himself “vinegar purveyor to the Queen”. Fortunately he forgot to bring the cheque. Later he learnt the duke, though a real aristocrat, was otherwise a fraud. But Newman cannot work up too much outrage. He also admits to “shameless exploitation” of his name “in pursuit of the common good”.

Another feature of this business is that it is grossly unprofessional to ask for autographs; previously, I succumbed only with Sir Paul McCartney. As this Paul signs, he says: “Hmm, this would be worth quite a lot if I die now . . .”

But it is not just Newman’s eyes that are steely: he was built to last. When asked what they will write on his gravestone, he replies: “I used to think it would be ‘Here lies Paul Newman, whose career ended when his eyes turned brown’. But I’m giving that up now, for one yet unwritten.”