“It was an extremely speculative choice,” said Paul Newman of opting to take a leave from the Yale School of Drama, as chronicled in Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, “The thought of an acting career was all really just a hunch.” That hunch collided with luck in 1955 when Newman was cast in a supporting role in The Battler, a TV drama based on an Ernest Hemingway story about a punch-drunk former boxing champion. James Dean was to play the lead, but crashed his Porsche 550 Spyder and was killed. Newman was asked to take over as the fighter.

After The Battler did well, Newman’s mission to become not a movie star, but a successful professional actor admired by his peers, gained momentum. He attributed his success as an actor to luck plus tenacity, saying some “people were true originals, instinctive at whatever they did… I wasn’t naturally anything… I felt there was something lacking in me.” His early rivalries with James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Steve McQueen gave way later in his life to fruitful collaborations with Robert Redford and Tom Cruise.

A key takeaway from Newman’s life is that successfully carrying out a life mission does not necessarily require innate talent in a given area. But it does require sustained persistence. He went on to star in many beloved films, such as The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, and The Sting. He received ten Oscar nominations, and won Best Actor for The Color of Money. Later in life Newman went on to become a successful race car driver. He is listed in The Guiness Book of World Records as the oldest winner of a professionally sanctioned race, winning the Rolex 24 at Daytona Beach at seventy years old.

Ultimately, Newman viewed philanthropy as his greatest legacy. Through his Newman’s Own food company, Newman raised and donated nearly $1 billion to many charities, saying: “I’m not looking for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts back into the soil more than he takes out.”