Barry Newman mini-bio: An unlikely early 1970s cult star, actor Barry Newman managed it with one of
his first movies, as Kowalski, the weary ex-cop loaded up on drugs, who takes
it on himself to drive from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours pursued by the
police in the counterculture road flick Vanishing Point (1971). The adventures
of this rebel without a cause certainly shows its age nowadays, but back then
it had the requisite existential feel and most certainly was a symbolic sign of
the times a la Peter Fonda's Easy Rider (1969). Newman showed himself off as
the new kind of brooding anti-hero that the average-looking Dustin Hoffman and
Al Pacino were making popular at the time. Newman didn't hit the kind of
heights that Hoffman and Pacino achieved, but has continued on solidly for
three decades in tough-talking supports. Born in 1938 in Boston, his father was
Austrian and mother Swedish. He graduated from Brandeis University with a
degree in anthropology, but turned to acting and the
New York scene after "crashing" a class at the Actor's Studio. Throughout the
1960s, he appeared on stage in such plays as "Night Life", "The Mouse Trap" and
"What Makes Sammy Run?" A couple of minor films came his way, including Pretty Boy
Floyd (1960). It was his hard-hitting role in The Lawyer (1970) that finally opened
the doors needed to get ahead and then Vanishing Point (1971). His cocky,
self-assured presence made him even sexier than he appeared. He carried this
attitude into his own TV series "Petrocelli" (1974), in the 1970s, playing a
hot-shot attorney but, following the show's demise, his career flattened out. An
obvious talent, Newman's later films such as Amy (1981), Daylight (1996) and The
Limey (1999) have managed to keep him in the public eye.
