If the word ''cool'' hadn't already existed, it would had to have been invented for Paul Newman, who died Friday at age 83 after a long battle with lung cancer.

Newman became a bona fide star after just his second movie, 1956's Somebody Up There Likes Me, a boxing drama in which he played Rocky Graziano, a role originally intended for another icon of cool, James Dean.

Unlike Dean or Marlon Brando, however, Newman's appeal was grounded in an easygoing, everyman quality. Despite his matinee-idol looks and blue eyes, Newman cut an approachable figure on the screen -- he was always one of us -- and his natural penchant for playing flawed men, outcasts and rebels added to his appeal.

In role after role -- the pool shark Fast Eddie in 1961's The Hustler, the indomitable convict in 1967's Cool Hand Luke, the womanizing rancher in 1963's Hud -- Newman took characters who didn't always act in respectable or noble ways and ran off with the audience's sympathy anyway.

Although it would have been easy for him to exploit the general goodwill the public had toward him, Newman rarely opted for easy, overtly commercial projects. When he did -- as in 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or 1973's The Sting, both of which famously paired him with Robert Redford -- the movies turned out to be worthy of his stature, crowd-pleasing entertainments that also went down as classics of their kind.

COMPLEX ROLES

Newman appeared in more than 100 movies, plays and TV shows -- including 1981's set-in-Miami Absence of Malice, partly filmed in The Miami Herald's newsroom -- in a career that spanned more than 55 years. Mostly, he gravitated toward more complex parts, be it the alcoholic lawyer working a seemingly unwinnable case in 1982's The Verdict or the manipulative drifter with a penchant for setting fires in 1958's The Long Hot Summer.

Summer also marked the first time Newman worked opposite his wife Joanne Woodward in a film. The couple had met five years earlier, while co-starring in a Broadway production of Picnic, and their 50-year marriage, one of the longest and most fabled in Hollywood, also affected Newman's career. He directed his first film, 1968's Rachel, Rachel, as a vehicle for Woodward when her career hit a slow patch, and it earned them both Oscar nominations (for Best Picture and Best Actress).

The pair would work together again several times, whether as co-stars (The Drowning Pool, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge) or as director and actress (The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, The Glass Menagerie).

When the couple celebrated their golden wedding anniversary this January, Newman said, ``Joanne has always given me unconditional support in all my choices and endeavors, and that includes my race car driving, which she deplores. To me, that's love.''

NEED FOR SPEED

Race cars became an obsession for Newman after he played a professional driver in 1968's Winning: He competed on the professional circuit and was a co-owner of a racing team. That was one of his passions outside acting. Another was his philanthropic work, including his line of Newman's Own food products, which have generated more than $250 million for charities.

Despite his acclaim, Newman didn't win a competitive Oscar until 1987 for The Color of Money, in which he reprised the role he had created in The Hustler for director Martin Scorsese and co-star Tom Cruise (he received an honorary Oscar the year before in recognition of his many memorable roles and his integrity, and another in 1994 for his humanitarian work). The movie was fine, and so was Newman, but the award was obviously more intended to reward his entire career than his work in that particular film.