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If you like your slots with a frisson of Hollywood glamour movieslots is the website for you and, as our list reveals, few actors brought the worlds of cinema and gambling together as brilliantly as Paul Newman…
Paul Newman's passing in March 2025 was a sad loss to the movie world. A consummate actor, heartthrob, and in his latter days, a big-hearted philanthropist, he was also responsible for playing some of the most memorable gamblers in the history of the movies. Here are three gambling pictures in which he excelled:
The Hustler (1961) Paul Newman plays "Fast" Eddie Felson, a preternaturally gifted young pool player with a crippling fear of failure masked by a thin veil of false bravado. This bravado leads him to challenge legendary pool shark "Minnesota Fats" to a big-money match, which at first he appears to be winning, but as the night goes on he loses his nerve and gets drunk, afraid of what a sober failure would do to his fragile ego. It takes a ruthless svengali figure with underworld connections to slap some sense into him and convince him to stop copping out, and he begins the long slow climb back to the top, but he soon discovers that the ruthlessness and moral compromise required to make it as a top level pool hustler just isn't in him, and he quits after a rematch with Fats.
The Color of Money (1986) The sequel to The Hustler sees an older and wiser Eddie Felson attempt play a paternal role in his relationship with a young, talented pool player called Vincent (Tom Cruise) that he has discovered. Seeing a young version of himself, Eddie tries to coax Vincent into joining him on the road in order to learn how to be a real pool hustler. Vincent's flashy, reckless ways cost them money, however, leading to an inevitable confrontation between master and apprentice after which both go their separate ways. They meet again, though, this time in a big competition, but who will emerge victorious in this pool-themed coming-of-age drama?
The Sting (1973) Effectively a gambling-based follow up to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Sting sees Robert Redford and Paul Newman re-united as vaguely moralistic con men in depression-era America. When a mutual friend, Luther, is killed on the orders of mob boss Doyle Lonegan, they team up to get even by setting up an elaborate scheme involving rigging up a phoney bookmakers to con Lonegan out of a huge amount of money. In order to win, though, they must enlist the services of a whole cabal of untrustworthy confidence tricksters, and avoid getting killed by Lonegan in the process. In addition to some great performances and elaborate set pieces, this film features some of the most visually stunning card tricks ever committed to celluloid as part of a famous scene in which Newman cheats Lonegan in a high stakes poker game on a train.
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