Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were married for 50 years. They had a "f**k hut".

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were the original Hollywood It couple.

Married for 50 years, the actors were not only extremely good looking but extremely in love with each other - together until Newman's passing in 2008.

In the mid '80s, the Butch Cassidy actor set out to compile an oral history of his life, conducting interviews with family and friends, where his only rule was: everyone had to be "completely honest".

Those conversations are now being released in a posthumous memoir, titled Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Man. In the book, obtained by People, the actor and those that knew him delve into his career, marriages, and his big love, Woodward.

On all accounts, Newman was a sex symbol. 

With his iconic blue eyes and smouldering smile, the actor was captivating in classics including The Hustler, Hud, and Cool Hand Luke.

He credits his wife for that persona.

"Joanne gave birth to a sexual creature," Newman said in the memoir. 

"We left a trail of lust all over the place. Hotels and public parks and Hertz Rent-A-Cars."

Image: Getty. 

The book describes Newman in his early years as an insecure adolescent from the small city of Shaker Heights, Ohio, who lacked confidence.

"I felt like a goodman freak," the Oscar-winner said. "Girls thought I was a joke. A happy buffoon."

But that would all change once he met Woodward in 1953. 

"I went from being not much of a sexual threat to something else entirely," he said.

When Newman met actress Joanne Woodward, they were both understudies in the Broadway play, Picnic; an all too fitting story about desire. 

He was married to his first wife Jackie Witte, and they had three young kids, Scott, Susan and Stephanie. 

Newman was 28, Woodward, 22, and according to The New York Times, Woodward knew she had found the man she would marry - even if he already was.

Although Woodward had insisted they spend the next several years apart, by 1957, the two were discreetly living together in Hollywood. Witte had initially refused to give Newman a divorce.

In the memoir, the actor called the affair "brutal in my detachment from my family."

He eventually divorced Witte and married Woodward in January 1958.

The same year they married, Newman and Woodward starred in The Long, Hot Summer together, and co-starred in 10 movies after that, including From the Terrace, Harry & Son, and Mr. & Mrs. Bridge.

Newman and Woodward in Long, Hot Summer. Image: Getty. 

In the memoir, Newman said how one night he came home to their new house in Beverly Hills, where his wife had fixed up a room off the master bedroom with a "thrift shop double bed" and a fresh coat of paint.

"'I call it the F**k Hut,' she said proudly. It had been done with such affection and delight," he recalled.

"Even if my kids came over, we'd go into the F**k Hut several nights a week and just be intimate and noisy and ribald."

The couple had three daughters, Nell, Melissa and Clea, and later moved to Westport, Connecticut, where they lived in a farmhouse on 15 acres.

Although happy and in love, the couple still faced plenty of ups and downs, often due to the actor's heavy drinking.

"Joanne and I still drive each other crazy in different ways," Newman recounts in the book. "But all the misdemeanours, the betrayals, the difficulties have kind of evened themselves out over the years."

The couple’s daughter Clea said despite the fact her parents "fought and it could be dramatic," they also "fought really hard to stay together."

"There were times it was pretty close but they worked hard at it. Ultimately they came together."

When good roles for Woodward dwindled, Newman produced and directed Rachel, Rachel for her in 1968. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture.

While his career was thriving - having received six Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and an honourary Academy Award in 1986 for his many performances - Newman also became a successful racecar driver, winning several national driving titles.

In 1983, he became co-owner of Newman/Haas Racing, and he even competed at Daytona in 1995 as a 70th birthday present to himself.

And although he and Woodward had little common interests - she loved opera and ballet, while he liked playing practical jokes and racing cars - they supported each other.

"Joanne has always given me unconditional support in all my choices and endeavours, and that includes my race car driving, which she deplores. To me, that’s love," Newman once said.

Image: Getty. 

Newman was also a philanthropist. 

In 1982, as a lark, he decided to sell salad dressing he had created and gifted to friends at Christmas - the Newman's Own brand was born.

All of its profits - a reported $250 million - are donated to charity, with most of the money used to set up summer camps for children with serious illnesses. 

"The embarrassing thing is that the salad dressing is outgrossing my films," Newman told The Times UK.

He also set up the Scott Newman Foundation (later Scott Newman Centre) in 1980 to educate the public about substance abuse, in honour of his eldest and only son, Scott, who died of an accidental overdose in 1978 when he was 28 years old.

Although Woodward was acutely aware of her husband's sexual persona, that wasn't her favourite part about him.

"Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades, but to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that’s a real treat," she told Closer Weekly.

And as Newman told Playboy magazine, in an often-repeated quotation about marital fidelity: "I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?"

It seems that love never faded.

In a 2015 interview with Town & Country magazine, then up-and-coming actor Ansel Elgort recalled a conversation he’d had with a professional driver. 

"The nicest guy [I ever drove] was Paul Newman," the driver told Elgort. 

"He asked me about myself, but also he had his wife in the back seat, and this guy was like 80 and he was making out with his wife... They were giggling and his arm was around her and he's kissing her."

Newman passed away in 2008, aged 83. He and Woodward had been married 50 years.

Now 92, Woodward, who has Alzheimer's, lives quietly at home on the property they shared.

The couple in 2004. Image: Getty. 

Feature image: Getty.

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