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.

When petty criminal Luke Jackson (Paul Newman) is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn’t play by the rules of either the sadistic warden (Strother Martin) or the yard’s resident heavy, Dragline (George Kennedy), who ends up admiring the new guy’s unbreakable will. Luke’s bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison’s dreaded solitary confinement cell, “the box,” make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison bosses.

Nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Actor for Newman. George Kennedy won Best Supporting Actor for his role as Dragline. This film is the first and most critically acclaimed of the multiple collaborations between Director Stuart Rosenberg and Newman. The scene where Newman performs “Plastic Jesus” on the banjo was not in the original script and came about when they heard co-star Harry Dean Stanton playing the song around a bonfire the night before. Newman insisted upon learning the banjo and the song for the scene.