Mourning the loss of the new old blue-eyes

Paul Newman is my hero.

In Hollywood, humility and selflessness are neither common nor particularly valued. This man was perhaps the most beautiful actor I have ever seen, and his humility made him devestatingly handsome.

He was talented and successful not only in acting, but in the food industry, but he "never stopped believing he was a regular guy who'd simply been blessed, and well beyond what was fair. So he just kept on paying it forward."

In one of the many obituaries and tributes written following Newman's death, Slate writer Dahlia Lithwick beautifully explained why his death is such a loss for all of us.

Newman was a regular visitor to The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, one of the many camps he founded for children with terminal illnesses. The kids didn't know he was famous, they just thought he was "this friendly old guy who kept showing up at camp to take them fishing."

Lithwick writes:

"It took me years to understand why Newman loved being at the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. It was for precisely the same reason these kids did. When the campers showed up, they became regular kids, despite the catheters and wheelchairs and prosthetic legs. And when Newman showed up, he was a regular guy with blue eyes, despite the Oscar and the racecars and the burgeoning marinara empire.

The most striking thing about Paul Newman was that a man who could have blasted through his life demanding 'Have you any idea who I am?' invariably wanted to hang out with folks—often little ones—who neither knew nor cared."

He was married to Joanne Woodward, just a regular non-Hollywood American, for 50 years and "always looked at her like something he'd pulled out of a Christmas stocking."

As the significant other of an actor myself, Newman's relationship inspires me to hope that a Hollywood marriage can be not only healthy and successful, but just like a fairy tale.

As a citizen of this seemingly godforsaken country, he inspires me to hope that people can be good, even given the corrupting influence of show business.