The actor who refused to call in a favour from Paul Newman: “Think about it before you ask”
Forging a career in Hollywood is the sum total of talent, hard work, and a healthy slice of luck. However, it’s also been said that it’s not what you know but rather who you know, so having a connection to some powerful players in the business is always helpful. Interestingly, though, one Academy Award-winning actor with a favour in her back pocket from Paul Newman – of all people – refused to play that card throughout her career, even though she admitted it always comforted her to know the option was there.
The actor in question has been a fixture on the big and small screens for the last three decades, enjoying a career that built steadily from bit-part roles to recurring characters on long-running shows to the glory of the Oscars. These days, she is arguably most famous for her role as CJ Gregg in Aaron Sorkin’s seminal political drama The West Wing and her Emmy-winning role on the CBS sitcom Mom. With the release of 2017’s I, Tonya, though, she found a movie role that caught the attention of the Academy and notched her a prestigious ‘Best Supporting Actress’ trophy.
Interestingly, though, despite all her accolades, Allison Janney isn’t exactly someone many would associate with the legendary Hollywood leading man Paul Newman. However, she crossed paths with the iconic Hustler star when she attended the liberal arts university Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. She was a young drama student at the time, and after an accident involving a plate glass window forced her to delay attending college by a year, she fortuitously found herself learning her craft at the feet of Newman, who directed the first play at the university’s newly-built theatre.
“Everyone who wasn’t even interested in acting was gonna audition for that,” Janney chuckled to Forbes, “which was a little upsetting to me. It was like, ‘You can’t go audition for the play. You’re not an actor. You don’t wanna be an actor. And my friends were like, ‘I don’t care: I’m auditioning for Paul Newman.'”
Janney desperately wanted a role in the play – the unfortunately titled CC Pyle and the Bunion Derby – and had a plan to appeal personally to Newman in her audition. “I just had to get up on stage and tell him a short story,” she remembered. “I knew he was a racecar driver. I appealed to that by talking about the new car I had gotten and how fast I could drive from Dayton, Ohio, to Kenyon College.” She smiled, “For whatever reason, I got it.”
Working with Newman turned out to be a dream for Janney, who called him “the loveliest man.” She loved his kind, quiet approach to dealing with actors, revealing that he would never shout at his cast from the auditorium, instead preferring to take them aside privately. Then, he would put his arm around them and calmly give them the direction they needed. “I appreciated the way he directed, and I could tell he had such a love for actors and the work,” she noted.
The experience was life-changing for Janney, and it somehow got even better when one day Newman told her, “I’ll do you a favour if you need one sometime. It has to be very specific, so think about it before you ask for it. But I definitely wanna help you out if you need it.”
Janney knew Newman was serious about what he said, so she was suddenly a young theatre actress with a favour from one of the most beloved Hollywood icons in history just waiting to be called in. While she pondered when to use that favour, though, Newman’s wife Joanne Woodward helped her attain a spot at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse, which is where she had learned her craft. “Without them, I don’t know where I would be right now,” Janney admitted. “They really mentored me in a way that really made a difference in my life.”
Fascinatingly, though, even though Janney had a card in her back pocket that could have opened almost every door in Hollywood, she never actually called in Newman’s favour. “I never thought anything was special enough,” she confessed. “I couldn’t think of what to ask him for, but it sure helped knowing that I had that option to call Paul Newman for a favour. He was sweet to me.”
