Tom Hanks, Paul Rudd and Extra Stars Replicate on Paul Newman’s Life and Legacy

The celebs had been aligned to have fun the life and legacy of Paul Newman.

Tom Hanks, Paul Rudd, Adam Driver and extra stars paid tribute to the late actor in the course of the A Night time of SeriousFun Gala, hosted by SeriousFun Youngsters’s Community, on April 7.

Through the 90-minute stay present, Hanks, 68, honored “American legend” Newman’s many performing elements, in addition to what he described as “perhaps crucial function he ever performed.”

“In 1988, Paul led a motion to begin up a camp designed particularly for youths with critical sicknesses. Thirty-seven years later, SeriousFun campers and packages may be discovered everywhere in the world,” he continued, including, “For Paul, seeing children increase slightly hell meant they had been doing issues they by no means thought attainable, whether or not flying down a zipper line 30 toes within the air, or just being away from residence for the very first time.”

Then, noting that Newman was a “little bit of an professional” on the subject of “elevating hell,” Hanks concluded his remarks, stating that the actor lived “a rare life.”

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Throughout his speech, Rudd, 56, honored Newman’s “work as a visionary chief” and all he did for the SeriousFun Youngsters’s Community.

“It started with a easy however profound thought. What if there was a camp particularly designed for youths with critical medical situations? And what if it could possibly be delivered at zero value to households? 37 years later, Paul’s imaginative and prescient has impressed a worldwide motion of camps and packages that serve over 100 completely different medical situations, designed to ship precisely what these children want, and proper beside world-class medical remedy,” he mentioned.

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Driver, 41, for his half, highlighted Newman’s work as a racecar driver, and the way that impacted his charity work.

“Perhaps it was all that racing that helped Paul understand the significance of difficult your self, as a result of that is precisely what each camper is inspired to do with the SeriousFun Youngsters’s Community,” he mentioned.

Newman was an actor, movie director and racecar driver who labored on an array of profitable tasks, together with The Hustler, The Sting, The Verdict, Cool Hand Luke, The Coloration of Cash and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child, to call a couple of.

The daddy of six died from lung most cancers at his residence in Westport, Conn., in September 2008 on the age of 83.

His legacy lives on by way of his charity work with the SeriousFun Youngsters’s Community, which describes itself as “the main community of medical specialty camps on this planet, comprised of 30 camps and packages serving kids with critical sicknesses and their households, at all times freed from cost.”

The group provides that it has “developed to turn out to be the chief in medical specialty camps, delivering over 2 million life-changing experiences to kids and households from over 50 international locations.”

Again in 2022, one among Newman’s daughters, Clea Newman, advised PEOPLE, “He actually wished to make a distinction and provides again. He went very deep with the camps.”