#I hate posting low quality AND watermarked photos but they're literally the only pictures of them together 😭

[philhoffman]

I met [Paul Newman] when we were doing Nobody’s Fool in 1994. I was in my twenties and he was maybe 70. He took me out to dinner and challenged me to a game of Ping-Pong. He beat me three times in a row. I remember him wanting to beat me — he was so competitive and it was so much fun and, right there, I felt like I belonged. That never stopped, till now.

He’s one of the only people who showed up to everything. Every show I directed, everything I acted in. Even some small theater with 60 people, some event for a theater that needed help. He and Joanne were just part of this amazing extended theatrical family. I still think that I want to grow up and be like him. That’s corny — no, it’s true. It’s not corny, because it’s him. You want to grow up and be like him, to take his example and learn from it. He was so giving with art and life, and he connected the two, creating something that nobody does or has done.

-Phil’s contribution to a New York Magazine piece on Paul Newman, published shortly after Paul’s death in 2008