The Last Movie Stars: a very Hollywood portrait of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward

Towards the end of Ethan Hawke’s six-part documentary The Last Movie Stars, which delves into the personal and professional lives of Hollywood couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Hawke’s daughter Maya repeats some advice he had recently imparted to her. A relationship is actually between three people, she reminds him; a couple’s shared time “creates this different person that is the two people together”. It gives Ethan, previously unsure of how to focus his documentary, his eureka moment. This absurd exchange between famous dad and rising-star daughter, which itself invokes that idea of a triplicate of forces, has the vague ring of truth. But though it reaches for meaning, you couldn’t quite call it insightful.

Its inclusion embodies the documentary’s ‘by us, for us’ ethos. Touting never-before-seen interviews that Newman gave for an abandoned memoir project – interviews that are performed in this documentary by contemporary stars (George Clooney plays Newman, Laura Linney Woodward) – the series examines the collision between Newman and Woodward’s personal and professional lives. Many of the actors who ‘play’ the interview subjects also offer their own insights into the couple’s lives, as well as unabashedly geeking out over the craft of acting. This approach leaves some surprises even for those who are familiar with couple’s respective careers, but is less rewarding for viewers who tend toward a harder-edged view of Hollywood. As his friend Gore Vidal says, Newman’s ascent was only possible because Jimmy Dean, the only young Method actor to rival Newman in sheer handsomeness, had died; in one interview, Newman, who claimed to benefit from “Newman’s Luck”, admits, “I don’t have the immediacy of personality… I’ve got both feet firmly placed in Shaker Heights.”

The unsentimental nature of fame is evinced in other ways: another nepotism baby, Zoe Kazan, who performs the interviews of Newman’s first wife Jackie Witt, embarrassedly informs Hawke that she’s never seen any of Woodward’s movies. Woodward began her career by nabbing an Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve (1957), but her opportunities faded as she aged and took on less work in order to raise Newman’s kids. (Newman is unsparing in his appraisal of his performance as a father, as are his children from both marriages.) But perhaps the saddest indictment of what Hollywood clout can turn into is the section on Newman’s Own, the actor’s line of food and drink. In Newman’s case, his brand’s profits go to charity, but the documentary rightly acknowledges that his salsa is now better known than Cool Hand Luke (1967). Time makes fools of us all – a far wiser message than most popular film histories offer.

► The Last Movie Stars is available to stream on NOW TV.