Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward at Home: Inside the It Couple’s Life Offscreen
Hollywood icons Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward quickly fell for each other when they met in 1953 as understudies for the play Picnic. “I had to do a dance as Hal. It was a really sexy dance. I couldn’t dance worth a shit. It’s how Joanne and I fell in love…. She’d always try to teach me in the wings,” Newman once said. “There was a glue that held us together then, and through the rest of our life together. And that glue was this: Anything seemed possible. The good, the bad, and the wonderful.”
There was only one problem: Newman was already married. The pair, who went on to make 16 films together, carried out an on-again, off-again affair for five years. They costarred as lovers during filming for The Long, Hot Summer in 1957 and by the time the picture hit theaters the following year, Newman had divorced his first wife, Jackie Witte, and tied the knot with Woodward. The pair remained married until Newman’s 2008 death 50 years later.
Throughout their marriage, Newman and Woodward owned properties in New York, California, and Connecticut. Read on to see how the longtime lovers lived at home.
Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images1/15First marital home
Shortly after their wedding, Newman and Woodward moved into a house in Laurel Canyon, California, per biographer Joe Morella. In this June 1958 snapshot, they are pictured studying lines at home for Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys. “We live quietly,” Woodward said of their lifestyle at that time. “Paul reads scripts every night. I think he’s going to wind up a director.” That prediction came true when he directed Woodward in the romantic drama Rachel, Rachel, which was nominated for best picture at the 1969 Academy Awards.
Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images2/15Gallery fans
Later that year, the couple were once again photographed reading scripts together in their Hollywood home. Personal photos line their wood-paneled walls—a decor choice that Newman embraced throughout his life. “My father personally jammed every available inch of wall with the family photographs,” the pair’s daughter, Melissa Newman, wrote of their Connecticut home in 2023.
Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images3/15Wall of fame
The pair also displayed their awards on the same wall. In this snap from the same photoshoot, Woodward arranges her 1957 best actress Oscar for her starring role in The Three Faces of Eve. In contrast, Newman’s gag “Noscar” statuette for not having yet won the coveted award is displayed to the left. (He would later take home the real thing for his role in the 1986 sports drama The Color of Money.)
Photo: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images4/15Moving to Manhattan
The power couple closed out 1958 by moving into a Greenwich Village duplex on 11th street. They are pictured amongst moving boxes in their new Manhattan dwelling, which featured floor-to-ceiling windows lined with plaid drapes. This photo was taken ahead of an appearance on CBS’s Person to Person celebrity interview program. When host Edward R. Murrow asked Woodward if she’d agree that she’d had a hectic year, the actor responded, “Well, considering in one year I got married, and had my first trip to Europe, and won the Academy Award, and did two pictures, and moved twice, and now I’m expecting a baby, I’d say that’s pretty hectic.”
CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images5/15A growing family
Newman and Woodward stand in the nursery loft at their NYC pad on the day of their Person to Person shoot. “This small cell up here is going to belong to the baby. It’s not a very large room and it’s not very conventional, but then we don’t expect a very conventional child,” Newman explained to Murrow before picking up a framed painting to show to the camera. “It’s a watercolor and it’s of [playwright] George Bernard Shaw and it’s going to hang over its crib because we believe in osmosis,” he joked.
Photo: Leo Fuchs/Getty Images6/15An interlude in Paris
Newman and Woodward sit on the floor of the Paris apartment where they lived in 1960 while filming on location for the film Paris Blues. “We lived in Montmartre and had a garden,” Woodward said, according to Morella. “Paul would stand out in the dead of winter with all the neighbors looking over the gates, grilling steaks in the yard.”
Photo: A Louis Goldman/Photo Researchers History/Getty Images7/15Greenwich Village living
Newman and Woodward posed for this 1961 portrait in their Greenwich Village pad, which featured painted brick walls that they decorated with their somewhat eccentric art collection. Though they lived in Hollywood when needed for work, the pair much preferred East Coast living. “Joanne and I are very whimsical about things like where we live,” Newman once said, according to Morella. “There are desert people, mountain people, beach people, woods people. Joanne and I are seasons people. We love the weather change.”
Photo: A Louis Goldman/Photo Researchers History/Getty Images8/15Antiques collectors
Newman photographs Woodward in their Manhattan apartment, circa 1961. The couple installed floating shelves next to the living room fireplace to display their knickknacks. “My parents shared a passion for antiques and vintage items, the quirkier the better,” their daughter Melissa recalled in 2023.
Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images9/15Beverly Hills rental
In 1962, the New York Daily News photographed the frequent costars in their rented Colonial Revival–style Beverly Hills home. The roughly 4,300-square-foot residence on Hazen Drive was furnished with comfort, rather than luxury, in mind. “I can live very comfortably on my earnings,” Newman said around this time, per biographer Susan Netter. “But I don’t have much in the way of material possessions beyond the furniture in our New York apartment, a few paintings, a Volkswagen, and a Lambretta motor scooter, which I use for getting around in the city…. We go out to Hollywood to live whenever Joanne or I have to work there.”
Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images10/15Lounging lovers
Newman and Woodward share a cozy armchair near the fireplace of their Beverly Hills rental in this 1962 snapshot. The lovebirds were known to be physically affectionate with each other throughout their entire relationship. “I had a driver once, and I asked him, ‘Who was your favorite person you ever drove?,’” actor Ansel Elgort once recalled to Town and Country. “He said, ‘The nicest guy was Paul Newman. He asked me about myself, but also he had his wife [Woodward] in the back seat, and this guy was like 80 and he was making out with his wife. They were just PDA and they were giggling and his arm was around her and he’s kissing her.’”
Photo: NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images11/15At the bar
Another image from the 1962 shoot shows off Woodward and Newman at their mirror-lined home bar. The well-appointed space was perfect for entertaining, which they did often—sometimes eschewing their more boring housekeeping duties in the process. “Artists first and foremost, the concept of property maintenance, for my parents, existed on some distant horizon. Leaks sprung and mice danced in the walls while they entertained writers and opera directors, a coterie of intellectuals who discussed theater, music, books, and politics,” their daughter Melissa wrote.
Photo: Oliver Morris/Getty Images12/15Upper East Side escape
In the early 1980s, the couple bought a penthouse apartment at 1120 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Carnegie Hill neighborhood, right off of Central Park. Woodward poses in an office nook at the residence in this snap, taken sometime between the early- to mid -’80s. The pied-à-terre stayed under their ownership for more than 40 years. “It was really kind of their romantic spot,” the couple’s youngest daughter, Clea, told The New York Times when the two-bedroom co-op was listed in 2024. “They would spend weeks at a clip there. They would go to the theater or the opera or out to dinner with friends.”
Photo: Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images13/15The Nook House
In 1961, Newman and Woodward purchased what would become their longtime family estate in Westport, Connecticut. The Aspetuck River ran through the bucolic 11-acre plot, which also boasted an apple orchard. According to Netter, they dubbed the countryside dwelling Nook House for all of its nooks and crannies.
Photo: Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images14/15Connecticut countryside
The Cool Hand Luke star stands outside his Connecticut residence in 2004. An antique brass bell with a pull cord—pictured here behind the star—serves as a quirky doorbell “that no one thinks to look for,” according to daughter Melissa. The distinctive bell fit in with Newman’s favored old-world, eclectic style. He “had a penchant for garden statuary, cherubs and gargoyles, zaftig maidens with cornucopia,” she wrote. “When my mother wanted to decorate a summer porch with wicker, my father would inevitably arrive home with a massive wooden chandelier painted gold and insist that it must also look like an English pub.”
Photo: Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images15/15Forever home
The Connecticut dwelling’s living room reflected a mishmash of the couple’s interior decorating styles. “They had overlapping tastes regarding decor,” Melissa wrote in 2023. “My mother was guided by the chintzy charm of her own mother, while my father was happy to clad everything with barnwood and line the walls with snapshots of friends and a disturbing cast of early American portraits of somber children and grim adults.”
Newman died of cancer at the Connecticut estate in September 2008. Woodward, who retreated from the public eye following a 2007 Alzheimer’s diagnosis, reportedly still lives there.
