To cinephiles, Paul Newman ’49 was an Oscar-winning actor known for his roles in “The Color of Money” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” To Kenyon students, he’s the namesake of the Paul Newman Room in Lowell House. To Melissa Newman, he was all these things as well as Dad. Melissa is an artist, author, singer and teacher. On April 3, she visited Columbus, Ohio, to accept the 2025 Great Ohioan Award on behalf of her father. The award was presented at the Ohio Statehouse in collaboration with Ohio Goes to the Movies, an upcoming 2026 celebration of Ohioans’ contributions to cinema. In this interview with Arts Editor Dorothy Yaqub ’26, Melissa shares intimate details about her father’s time at Kenyon, his prolific career, her recently released book and more.

You’re in Columbus today to accept the Great Ohioan Award on behalf of your father. Could you tell me a little bit more about this award and what it means to you?

What I love is he’s being honored in addition to Clark Gable and Dorothy Dandridge. So he’s in really good company. The commonality is Ohio, and I think that the wonderful thing about handing it over to the community is the diversity of people that they chose. I think my dad would be thrilled to be in such good company.

And [he’s] a natural fit because, as I always tell my kids, he was Taylor Swift famous in the 60s and 70s. So he’s definitely a good choice for the first round. I just love that idea about wanting to create opportunities for people to come together, to not just watch a film on your device, but to get into a room with people, all different kinds of people, and have a shared experience.

Kenyon is very proud to call your father an alumnus. How did his time at the College shape him and your family, and are there any stories about his relationship to Kenyon that you’d like to share?

He got kicked off the football team and decided he had to do something with his spare time and decided to join the drama group. One of the things that he was really proud of was that he was the first student to own a student-owned business on Main Street in Gambier, because he ran a laundromat. He took laundry in the front of the house, then he sent it out the back for a lady to do the washing. And where he really made his money was that he had kegs of beer, and then he would sell beer in the front of the house. And he was very proud. Those are the kinds of stories I heard about Kenyon. I always think that my father’s relationship to Kenyon had a lot to do with beer. I didn’t hear a lot about studying, really terrible message. I don’t envy his parents, but I think that he really appreciated the camaraderie.

Then he went back and he directed at Kenyon. He really appreciated his time there. He received an honorary doctorate from Kenyon that he was really proud of. I know that Allison Janney [’82] was in the play that he directed there, and then she certainly went on to have a distinguished career, and is still having a distinguished career, and actually became part of my mother [the actress Joanne Woodward]’s acting group. When she won her Academy Award, [she] did a shout out to my mom, which I thought was pretty cool. But yeah, that’s how she got to know my parents, through Kenyon.

That’s incredible. How would you say that your father’s life, career and values have shaped your own life and the person that you are today?

I always like to say that if I had to have two movie stars for parents, I’m glad I got the ones I got. I was really blessed to have both of them, but certainly for my father there was a high priority for giving back to the community, for being part of the community. He didn’t want to divorce himself from being a politically active person and an engaged person. He thought to himself that there was no way that he could ever earn the kind of luck that he’d been given, this kind of absurd level of fame that he had, and he just wanted to always give back.

I would love to talk a little bit more about your own work. In 2023 you published Head Over Heels: Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman: A Love Affair in Words and Pictures, a book of photos and letters about your parents’ relationship. Could you tell me more about the creative process of compiling and publishing the book and what you hope readers take away from it?

Everywhere in our house, there’s just walls of photographs that my dad used to walk around with, hammering nails and putting up, just jammed in together. At first we thought, “Oh, we’ll just take these pictures off the wall and put them in a book.” But then again, when you realize that your family photos are taken by really famous photographers like Richard Avedon, it’s a really different process to put a book together. We had to get permissions and negotiate fees and all sorts of things, but we had incredible access to photographers and so many people that were so delighted to participate. We got permission to print things that most people hadn’t seen before. So we ended up with this incredible amount of material.

The photos on the front and the back of the books are so intimate, and they were taken by Stuart Stern, who was a really close friend. He was a huge part of our family and took these really intimate photos of my parents when they were dating each other, because they had an illicit affair when my dad was still married [to Jackie Witte].

My parents were married for 50 years and it was a complicated marriage. They were actors trying to have a relationship in Hollywood. They were both complicated people. So it wasn’t a simple fairy tale. That’s one of the things about the book, that I wanted to really show the most beautiful aspects of their relationship, the sort of inexorability of what held them together. That’s one of the messages of the book, that it’s not always easy, but I think the book, it’s super romantic. But it’s not overly sweet. It’s got some really funny stuff, and it’s just about two people really working hard to have a relationship that lasts and works.

I feel like it’s more of an event than a book. That’s what I want it to be. I want people to sit down with it and just immerse themselves. And people often say that when they finish looking at it, they really feel as though they know my parents, that they’ve been on this journey. They really feel like they’ve seen this relationship.

We’ve been talking a lot about your parents, but you’ve also had a very long and successful career pursuing arts and other interests. What advice would you give for current students, current young people at Kenyon and just in the world more generally, who are also interested in pursuing a similar path?

A really beautiful thing that I’ve realized is that when you’re an artist, you’re an artist, and you don’t have to necessarily pick and choose. You can take your interests, even if they seem really disparate, and you can put them in a box and shake that box up. The path that comes out of it may be a job that doesn’t even exist yet.

I’m a big advocate of everybody doing everything all the time. And my dad was definitely the same. He had such crazy interests. They veer off in all different directions. I loved it when he wasn’t being self conscious. I was always giving him sketchbooks and saying, “Dad, make those little drawings,” or “Dad, don’t worry about writing a novel. Just write poems, you know?” He was a wonderful writer. Did I talk about the camps?

You did not.

Okay, this is important, because you’re at Kenyon and you guys are young people. My dad started these camps for kids that have serious illnesses and life-threatening diseases. The original one was in Connecticut, and it’s called The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. Now there’s like 20 of them, and they’re all over the world, and it’s called the SeriousFun Children’s Network. They are the happiest, most amazing places. This was my dad’s idea, and then the community came together to create these places and they just kept growing exponentially.

One of the camps is in Ohio. It’s in Morrow County, and it’s called the Flying Horse Farms. They’re always looking for donations, but more importantly, they’re looking for volunteers. Honestly, it is life changing to go volunteer at a SeriousFun camp. I think that is the purest iteration of my father’s legacy. He spent time being a camp counselor, hanging out with these kids who had no idea who he was and he loved that they just knew he was the guy who started the camp. It’s just another beautiful, beautiful thing that he left to the world, besides his movies.

And if people are looking for where to start with my dad’s movies, I would say “The Sting” and “The Verdict.” And if you like black and white, I would say “Hud” is a really amazing movie. And “The Hustler” is a really amazing film. So that’s your assignment, boys and girls.

Is there anything else that you want to share while you’re on the line?

I’m really excited to be represented at my dad’s alma mater. Maybe we’ll have to come there and do a film series someday.

That would be incredible. We’ll see what we can get in the works.

You know what I also do that’s cool? I made a t-shirt. It’s my dad pointing at the camera, and it says “Research, Register, Vote” in red letters. I was trying to figure out a way to get it into Kenyon. I’m sure that after this evening I’ll have a way. When the time comes, keep your ears open for that.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.