Newman set to call it a wrap

Paul Newman's most recent film project is Cars.

WASHINGTON - The brilliant blue eyes of Paul Newman were just 29 years old when he starred in his first film - a swords-and-sandals epic that the actor hated and which he later begged people not to watch.

Since then Newman has appeared in around 50 other feature movies, including such hits as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke and The Sting, and along the way he has picked up an Oscar for best actor.

At the moment he can be heard in the animated feature Cars, in which he provides the voice for an angsty cartoon version of a 1951 Hudson Hornet.

Yet now at the age of 81, Newman has suggested his career as an actor may almost have run its course. He said he might have only one more film left in him - a project he has apparently already decided but about which he will not yet provide details.

"I will probably have one film left in me - the last hurrah," he told the Associated Press. "It's time. When it's time to get out, it's time to get out."

Newman was speaking at the Double H Ranch in upstate New York, one of a number of camps he helped establish for children with cancer, Aids and other illnesses. The camps have been funded largely by proceeds Newman has donated from profits from his range of salad dressings and pasta sauces.

"When we started the camp we had no idea of the profound impact these camps would have on these kids," said Newman, who also has a keen interest in motorsports and once participated in the 24-hour Le Mans endurance race.

Before he was an actor, Newman served in the US Navy during World War II. He then attended university and studied acting before developing a successful stage career on Broadway. His first outing with the movies was in a film called The Silver Chalice that Newman later described as the worst of the "entire 1950s decade". When it was broadcast on television in 1966 he took out an advertisement in a trade paper apologising for his performance.

He quickly put that film behind him, building a career based on both his arresting looks and nuanced performances. By now he considers himself something of a Hollywood survivor. "You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning - Holy Christ, whaddya know. I'm still around," he once said.

"It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career."

But if he is preparing to say goodbye to the movies, he is apparently sticking by charitable efforts. Double H Ranch executive director Max Yurenda said: "He is 100 per cent focused on developing new projects - there is no indication he is going to slow down at all. If anything, it's going to pick up pace."

The Double H Ranch, co-founded by Newman and the late amusement park developer Charles Wood in 1992, is raising money for a US$15 million ($24 million) fund. Camp officials say this will help them continue to take more than 1000 summer campers every year.

Newman's involvement in the Cars cartoon is his first feature work since 2002's Road to Perdition in which he starred alongside Tom Hanks.

BEST OF NEWMAN

* 1994 The Hudsucker Proxy
* 1989 Blaze
* 1986 The Color of Money
* 1974 The Towering Inferno
* 1973 The Sting
* 1972 The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
* 1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
* 1967 Cool Hand Luke
* 1966 Torn Curtain
* 1963 Hud
* 1962 Sweet Bird of Youth
* 1958 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

- INDEPENDENT