Cars Production Notes

THE VOICE TALENTS: OWEN WILSON (Lightning McQueen) gives a fine-tuned comedic performance as the voice of a hotshot rookie race car that learns to get his kicks on Route 66.

Wilson has made his mark in Hollywood as both an actor and writer for feature films. Last year, the actor had audiences in hysterics with his antics in the mega-hit comedy, “Wedding Crashers,” which became the sixth biggest film of the year. Among his most popular roles, he has twice played the character of Roy O’Bannon, the most laconic gunman in the old West in the hit Touchstone Pictures/Spyglass Entertainment features “Shanghai Noon” and “Shanghai Knights.”

Wilson has had long-running creative collaborations with both his brother Luke and writer/director Wes Anderson. He co-wrote and starred in Anderson’s first film, “Bottle Rocket,” as well as co-writing and co-executive producing his second feature “Rushmore.” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” which he also co-wrote and starred in, earned him and Anderson nominations for an Academy Award® for Best Original Screenplay.

Wilson’s additional acting credits include “The Cable Guy,” “Armageddon,” “Permanent Midnight,” “Breakfast of Champions,” “Meet the Parents,” “Zoolander,” “Behind Enemy Lines,” “I Spy,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Around the World in 80 Days,” and “Meet the Fockers.” His upcoming films include the comedy “You, Me and Dupree.”

PAUL NEWMAN (Doc Hudson) lends his legendary voice to this solid citizen of Radiator Springs who never races to conclusions and ends up inspiring McQueen.

Newman, who has two Oscars®, has been one of the American cinema’s most important and most prolific actors for over half a century. He is a philanthropist, a humanitarian, a race car driver and the founder of a multimillion dollar food empire, Newman’s Own. In addition to giving the profits to charity, he also ran Frank Sinatra out of the spaghetti sauce business. On the downside, the spaghetti sauce is out-grossing his films.

The films, which number more than fifty on his resume, have incidentally made him a screen legend. In 1987, he won an Academy Award® for Best Actor for his performance as pool shark “Fast” Eddie Felson in Martin Scorsese’s “The Color of Money.” It marked a reprisal of the role he had played 25 years earlier in “The Hustler,” which had brought him his second of eight Best Actor Oscar® nominations. He received his first Oscar® nomination in 1959 for his work opposite Elizabeth Taylor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and has also been nominated for his performances in “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke,” “Absence of Malice,” “The Verdict,” “Nobody’s Fool,” and “The Road to Perdition.”

Newman has also been recognized for his work behind the camera, earning an Academy Award® nomination for Best Picture and Golden Globe® 24