Ten-time Oscar nominee Paul Newman, creator of iconic movie anti-heroes in “The Hustler,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” has died after a battle with cancer.

The 83-year-old screen legend with the piercing blue eyes died Friday at his farmhouse near Westport, Conn., said publicist Jeff Sanderson. He was surrounded by his family and close friends.

Word of his illness leaked earlier this year after Newman, citing health issues, dropped out of directing a fall production of “Of Mice and Men.”

Newman, in addition to his cinematic brilliance in more than 60 movies, became known as a director, race car driver and philanthropist.

He won three Oscars – two honorary, and one for the Martin Scorsese-directed “The Color of Money.” Newman reprised his memorable role as pool shark “Fast Eddie” Felson from “The Hustler” to capture the 1986 award.

Newman always appeared high up on any list of screen legends, box office stars or sex symbols.

In 1982, along with writer A.E. Hotchner, he founded “Newman’s Own,” a company that began producing salad dressing and now also makes pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, salsa and dog food. Newman once sampled the dog food on an appearance on the Jay Leno show.

His share of the profits of “Newman’s Own” goes to charity – as of 2006 he had already contributed more than $220 million. Newman joked about the “embarrassment” that “my salad dressing grosses more than my movies.”

One of the charities he founded is the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, a camp for terminally ill children.

Although he played the leads in “The Desperate Hours” and Tennessee Williams’ “Sweet Bird of Youth” on Broadway in the ’50s, just around the time his movie career was taking off, he didn’t receive his first Tony nomination until 2003, when, at 78, he played the role of the Stage Manager in “Our Town.”

Newman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, on Jan. 26, 1925. His father owned a dry-goods store where he briefly worked.

He was training as a pilot during World War II but stopped because he was color blind, instead serving as a Navy radio operator.

After the war he attended Kenyon College, where he met and married his first wife, Jackie Witte. They had three children, Scott, Susan and Stephanie; Scott died in 1978 of a drug overdose.

He was “discovered” by two New York agents while studying at the Yale School of Drama. They quickly found him work in the burgeoning world of TV drama.

In 1953 he was cast as the understudy in the original Broadway production of William Inge’s “Picnic.” It was during the run of “Picnic” that he met his future wife, Joanne Woodward, who was also an understudy.

By 1954 he was a regular in Hollywood. He was so embarrassed about his first starring role, in “The Silver Chalice,” a Biblical epic, that he took out an ad in Variety apologizing for it.

Soon his Hollywood career took off. In 1956 he won the starring role of Rocky Graziano in “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” when the actor who was supposed to play it, James Dean, died in a car crash.

In 1958 he played Brick in Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” opposite Elizabeth Taylor, winning his first Oscar nomination.

That same year, in “The Left Handed Gun,” he played Billy the Kid – the first in his gallery of anti-heroes. Later incarnations included “Hud” in 1963, “Cool Hand Luke” in 1967 and Butch Cassidy in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” in 1969.

Four years later he and his “Butch” co-star Robert Redford teamed up again in “The Sting.”

In 1958, he starred in “The Long, Hot Summer” and was reunited with Woodward. He divorced his first wife and married her.

Unlike many Hollywood marriages, theirs was never plagued with rumors of infidelity. Newman’s explanation: “Why go out for hamburger when you’ve got steak at home?”

They have three daughters, Elinor, Melissa and Claire. He directed Woodward in several films, including “Rachel, Rachel,” which was nominated for Best Picture, and “”The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,” in which their daughter Elinor, whose stage name is Nell Potts, also appeared.

Woodward was the artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse. She cast her husband as the Stage Manager in “Our Town” (the production that later transferred to Broadway.) In his program bio Newman described himself as a local manufacturer of salad dressing.