Paul Newman believed that the, “benevolence of luck,” played a key part in his life—being lucky was an art. You had to put in the work and make the most of that luck. For him, it was about the craft, the exploration, the hustle.

Newman was an actor, director, philanthropist, professional race car driver, entrepreneur, president of The Actors Studio from 1983 to 1995 (first ever guest on Inside the Actors Studio in 1994), writer, and number nineteen on Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List” (the credit he was reportedly proudest of).

A student of The Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg alongside contemporaries like Marlon Brando, James Dean and his future wife, Joanne Woodward, Newman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor eight times, finally winning in 1987 for The Color of Money.

Known for portraying the anti-hero, Newman crackled on the screen with piercing blue eyes that somehow even penetrated the screen in black and white. “I wish I could admit to some predictable, defined way I chose the parts, but I can’t, it was all whimsical.” Often critical of his early work, Newman noted, “That nagging dissatisfaction is the very thing that keeps me on my toes…and makes me curious.”

On the occasion of his centenary, we highlight films that show the arc of his growth as an actor from his early work to his later years—leaving a lasting legacy and never losing his fire on screen and off. “When you talk about a life arc, it’s very rare to see that. Look at his peers: Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Brando, Monroe. Their stories all end so sadly…as if those who burned bright had to burn out. Paul Newman doesn’t do that. His later work in The Verdict, The Color of Money, and Nobody’s Fool is some of the best work of his life. At the end of their life, (Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are) trying to make meaningful, substantive art, the same way they were when they were kids,” Ethan Hawke.

After Brick Pollitt (Paul Newman) injures himself while drunkenly revisiting his high school sports-star days, he and his tempestuous wife, Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor), visit his family’s Mississippi plantation for the 65th birthday of his hot-tempered father, Big Daddy (Burl Ives). Cantankerous even with declining health, Big Daddy demands to know why Brick and Maggie haven’t yet given him a grandchild, unlike Brick’s brother Gooper (Jack Carson) and his fecund wife, Mae (Madeleine Sherwood).

Adapted from the 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning Tennessee Williams play, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof earned Newman his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. The film received six nominations overall. Later in life, when discussing his own alcoholism, Newman would compare himself to Brick, looking for that “click.”