Paul Newman: The extraordinary life of an ordinary man

I'm a big fan, particularly of those ice blue eyes, so I thought it was wonderful. Then I did a double take. Hang on - he died of cancer in 2008. How could this be? Perhaps he wrote it from, you know, the other side.

But it turns out he commissioned The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man (Penguin Random House Australia, $45) well before his death and it somehow got lost.

And now the raw, candid and long-awaited autobiography from Paul Newman, one of the greatest icons of the 20th Century, has been released on October 18.

He was not just an actor but a film director, race car driver, philanthropist and entrepreneur with one of the best spaghetti sauces around.

Newman was married twice and fathered six children.

He was the husband of Oscar-winning actress Joanne Woodward for 50 years until his death - an amazing record for a Hollywood couple.

In 1986, Paul Newman tasked his best friend, screenwriter Stewart Stern, with interviewing the people who had shaped his life in order to create an oral history of it.

The only stipulation was that anyone who spoke on the record had to be completely honest. And that applied to Newman as well.

After hearing and reading what they had to say, Newman then dictated his own version.

The project lasted five years and, somehow, the thousands of pages of transcripts have only recently been rediscovered in the Connecticut home where Woodward still lives and turned into The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man.

Now, this long-lost memoir has been published.

Full of wonderful stories and recollections by his family, friends, and such luminaries as Elia Kazan, Tom Cruise, George Roy Hill and Martin Ritt, this book will surprise and shock readers as it reveals Newman's previously unknown sides.

Newman details his fascinating story from troubled beginnings, marked by fraught relationships with both his mother and father, to the iconic film roles (both good and bad) that cemented his status as a Hollywood icon and heartthrob, and the complicated relationships that were formed along the way.

He talks about early rivals such as Marlon Brando and James Dean, his first marriage, his drinking, his philanthropy, the death of his son Scott and the desire for his daughters to understand the truth about their father.

The most moving material centres on his relationship with Joanne, their deep love for each other, the ways she shaped him intellectually, emotionally and sensually and his enduring reliance on her.

"This book came out of the struggle to try and explain it all to my kids," Newman said.

"I want to leave some kind of record that sets things straight, pokes holes in the mythology that's sprung up around me, destroys some of the legends, and keeps the piranhas off. Something that documents the time I was on this planet with some kind of accuracy. Because what exists on the record now has no bearing at all on the truth. That's all I really want to do."