Paul Newman is still not dead. And I’m genuinely happy to know that. Newman is one of the all-time great actors and movie stars (yes, there’s a difference), a man without scandal for decades, a famously faithful husband and friend, and an incredible philanthropist.

I hope he lives comfortably for many more years. When you’re 83, that isn’t guaranteed. Apparently living out your time as privately and personally as you wish isn’t, either.

Let me get this straight: The National Enquirer supposedly heard from an unnamed source who may or may not know Newman that the actor was at death’s door due to cancer. That was enough for even reputable news organizations to spread the hearsay in an escalating schadenfreude race in which tragedy is entertainment.

Newman’s longtime neighbor and business partner A.E. Hotchner confirmed Wednesday that his friend does, indeed, have an unspecified form of cancer and is receiving treatment. Finally some credible news to report. But did it need to be pried from someone who would prefer to face mortality with the same polite privacy that has defined his life?

Not even a statement from Newman that he’s “doing nicely” is enough to call off the unseemly deathwatch. Newman has always been a man of few words that meant plenty.

“Doing nicely” sounds like he’d like to be left alone to live, as he was doing nicely before.

I have written several obituaries on Hollywood legends who died after long ailments: Katharine Hepburn, Bob Hope, Jack Lemmon, Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck among them. I prefer that the subject is dead before starting to write. Preparing celebrity obits in advance gets the timeline data right but doesn’t capture the loss when it occurs. I’m grateful each day writing Newman’s is delayed.

Give Newman some peace now, before he rests in it forever.

Friends, family and show business colleagues gathered to remember late Oscar-winning director, producer and actor Sydney Pollack at a private memorial service, according to a person with knowledge of the service.

The person insisted on anonymity because the family wanted details of the service on Saturday to be kept private and the person was not authorized to release any information.

The 73-year-old director, producer and actor died of cancer on May 26 while surrounded by family at his home in Los Angeles, according to his publicist, Leslee Dart. Pollack had been diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago.

Pollack won Academy Awards for best picture and best director for the 1985 epic “Out of Africa.” In a career spanning nearly five decades, he directed over 20 films, including “The Firm,” “Havana” and “Absence of Malice.” The last film he directed was the 2006 documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry.”

Pollack had worked with seemingly every A-list star in the business: Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda, Sean Penn, Nicole Kidman, Barbra Streisand and George Clooney. He collaborated with Robert Redford on seven films, including “Out of Africa,” 1973’s “The Way We Were,” 1975’s “Three Days of the Condor” and 1979’s “The Electric Horseman.”

While best known as a director, Pollack frequently stepped in front of the camera. He played the agent of Dustin Hoffman’s cross-dressing soap star in 1982’s “Tootsie,” which he also directed, and the old-school law firm boss in 2007’s “Michael Clayton,” which he also co-produced. He also appeared on “Will & Grace,” “Entourage” and “The Sopranos.”

Pollack is survived by his wife, Claire; two daughters, a brother and six grandchildren. Pollack’s son, Steven, died in a plane crash in 1993.

Friends, family and show business colleagues gathered to remember late Oscar-winning director, producer and actor Sydney Pollack at a private memorial service, according to a person with knowledge of the service.

The person insisted on anonymity because the family wanted details of the service on Saturday to be kept private and the person was not authorized to release any information.

The 73-year-old director, producer and actor died of cancer on May 26 while surrounded by family at his home in Los Angeles, according to his publicist, Leslee Dart. Pollack had been diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago.

Pollack won Academy Awards for best picture and best director for the 1985 epic “Out of Africa.” In a career spanning nearly five decades, he directed over 20 films, including “The Firm,” “Havana” and “Absence of Malice.” The last film he directed was the 2006 documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry.”

Pollack had worked with seemingly every A-list star in the business: Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda, Sean Penn, Nicole Kidman, Barbra Streisand and George Clooney. He collaborated with Robert Redford on seven films, including “Out of Africa,” 1973’s “The Way We Were,” 1975’s “Three Days of the Condor” and 1979’s “The Electric Horseman.”

While best known as a director, Pollack frequently stepped in front of the camera. He played the agent of Dustin Hoffman’s cross-dressing soap star in 1982’s “Tootsie,” which he also directed, and the old-school law firm boss in 2007’s “Michael Clayton,” which he also co-produced. He also appeared on “Will & Grace,” “Entourage” and “The Sopranos.”

Pollack is survived by his wife, Claire; two daughters, a brother and six grandchildren. Pollack’s son, Steven, died in a plane crash in 1993.

Paul Newman, who has recently appeared gaunt in photos and dropped plans to direct a play in his Connecticut hometown, is battling cancer, his longtime neighbor and business partner said Wednesday.

Writer A.E. Hotchner, who partnered with Newman to start Newman’s Own salad dressing company in the 1980s, said the 83-year-old actor told him about the disease about 18 months ago.

He doesn’t say what kind of cancer, but said Newman is in active treatment.

“I know that it’s a form of cancer,” Hotchner told The Associated Press. “It’s a form of cancer and he’s dealing with it.”

Newman issued a statement late Tuesday that he’s “doing nicely” but didn’t specifically address questions about cancer. A call was placed to his spokesman Wednesday seeking comment.

The Oscar winner appeared to have lost weight when he was photographed at the Indianapolis 500 auto race last month. Martha Stewart, in an entry dated June 6, posted a photo on her blog of herself with the actor, who looked thin, at a luncheon to benefit the Hole in the Wall Gang camps for critically ill children. (The Hole in the Wall Gang was led by Newman’s affable outlaw character, Butch, in the 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”)

Newman won an Oscar for his leading role in 1986’s “The Color of Money.” His screen credits also include “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Verdict” and “Road to Perdition.”

Hotchner said Newman had an operation a few years ago. “It was certainly somewhere in the area of the lung,” he said. “He’s battling,” Hotchner said. “He’s doing all the right stuff. Paul is a fighter. He seems to be going through a good period right now.”

Asked about his prognosis, Hotchner said, “Everybody is hopeful. That’s all we know.”

In 1982, Hotchner and Newman started a company to market Newman’s original oil-and-vinegar dressing. Newman’s Own, which began as a joke, grew into a multimillion-dollar business selling popcorn, salad dressing, spaghetti sauce and other foods. All the company’s profits are donated to charities. By 2007, the company had donated more than $175 million, according to its Web site.

Last month, officials at Connecticut’s Westport Country Playhouse cited unspecified health issues when they announced that Newman would not direct “Of Mice and Men” this fall.

Newman lives in Westport with his wife, Joanne Woodward.

Two friends said Tuesday that Newman appeared to be doing well.

“I think he’s feeling quite well,” said actor James Naughton, who spoke to Newman on Monday night. “As far as I can tell he’s doing very well.”

Newman had an infection over the winter, but seems to have that under control, Naughton said. He was lively at this month’s Hole in the Wall Gang camp fundraiser, he said.

Michael Brockman, Newman’s racing team partner, said Newman told him recently that he wants to get back into his race car for a test run and possibly another competition. His last race was last fall, he said.

“I think he’s doing better than he was,” Brockman said, noting that Newman had regained most of the weight he had lost.

“I think he looks great,” said Brockman, who saw Newman last weekend. “I wish I looked that good.”

Brockman called Newman “one of the best guys I ever met.”

“He’s just a regular guy,” Brockman said. “He’s humble.”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Oscar-winning actor Paul Newman, responding to a flurry of unconfirmed reports he is gravely ill with cancer, issued a terse, cryptic statement on Tuesday that shed little light on his actual condition.

“Newman says he’s doing nicely,” his spokesman, Jeff Sanderson, said in a message e-mailed to Reuters and other media outlets in answer to queries about the cancer reports.

Reached by telephone in his Los Angeles office, Sanderson declined to elaborate or give further details.

“This is what I got from him. He says he’s doing nicely, and this is the statement I wanted to share with you, and that’s what I have,” Sanderson said. “I spoke to his office. … this is the statement that came directly from him.”

According to numerous media accounts circulating on TV and the Internet since Monday, Newman, 83, has been diagnosed with lung cancer and was undergoing out-patient treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

A spokeswoman for Sloan-Kettering said she had no information about whether Newman was a patient there.

Newman announced just over a year ago he was essentially retiring from a half-century career in acting because of his age.

Last month, he stepped down as director of a stage production of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut, citing unspecified health issues.

Newman’s wife of more than 50 years, actress Joanne Woodward, is a co-artistic director of the playhouse.

Newman, who appeared in some 60 movies, made his name portraying brooding characters in films like “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,” “The Hustler” and “Hud” — roles that all won him Oscar nominations.

The blue-eyed performer enhanced his superstar status later by playing winking rogues and anti-heroes — such as the title character in “Cool Hand Luke,” an outlaw in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and a suave con man in “The Sting.”

He earned nine Academy Award nominations in all, but his only Oscar win was for best actor in the 1986 film “The Color of Money,” portraying the same pool shark, Fast Eddie Felson, he had played when he was nominated in 1961 for “The Hustler.”

Newman also enjoyed successful side endeavors as an auto racing driver and the creator of a line of food products, Newman’s Own, that bore his name and face on their labels and donated all its earnings to charity.

His last two Oscar nominations came late in his career for wizened elder roles in the 1994 film “Nobody’s Fool” and in 2002 for “Road to Perdition.”

He won an Emmy Award as best actor in a television movie for his role as the meddling, elder father in the HBO’s 2005 ensemble drama “Empire Falls,” which also co-starred Woodward. His last big-screen acting role was as the voice of Doc Hudson, a talking antique automobile in the 2006 animated film “Cars.”