NEWMAN GROWN / Paul's daughter Nell heads up the organic side of his charity food business

When Nell Newman steps out of her 1993 Subaru wagon and walks into the Aptos natural food store, it's easy to assume she's just another left-leaning, organic-eating surfer chick, which she is.

The frayed cuffs of Newman's cotton shirt and the turquoise dangling from her ears don't look out of place this close to Santa Cruz, where she has lived since 1988. Nor does her straight blond hair, which fades to bleached blond before it hits the middle of her back.

It's only when Newman walks past a row of Fig Newmans or a bag of organic pretzel sticks that an observant shopper might do a double-take. Nell's image is on the corner of each package. She's standing next to her famous dad, the pair posed like the farmer couple in Grant Wood's "American Gothic."

Nell Newman is co-president of the small organic division of the Newman's Own, which Paul Newman started almost 20 years ago. Since it began, Newman's Own has donated more than $100 million to charity. Nell Newman's slice of it, which she started with a family friend in 1993 as a way to raise the environmental consciousness of her dad's company, will have given away about $1.4 million by the end of the year.

That Nell Newman, 42, is the daughter of actors Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman becomes obvious in person, when you look into eyes every bit as blue as her father's. She has the set of his mouth, too, but the rest of her face is built from her mother's soft features.

Newman is without a doubt, however, her father's daughter. She likes to race cars, as he does. She surfs every day and loves to fish, the latter a skill she learned at his side. Like her dad, who she calls Pop, she loves food.

She can lead you to the best taco stand in Santa Cruz. And she's got a slightly goofy, offbeat sense of humor and a down-to-earth, self-effacing style that people close to her say mimics her father's.

Despite the fact that Newman dropped out of high school and spent several years away from both family businesses - acting and food - she is clearly the heir apparent of the Newman's Own dynasty and the apple of her daddy's eye. And that means turning her back on the fancy conventions a wealthy, celebrity existence might offer and turning instead to social causes and a simpler life.

Nell Newman's famous face is something she uses to sell cookies and pretzels and to further the cause of organic farming, but she doesn't drop her name to get restaurant reservations, backstage passes or free surfing gear. Like her parents, she doesn't particularly like media attention. Her father rarely gives interviews anymore. Nell in particular tries to stay out of the local press.

"You've got to be able to pick your nose in public, and it gets so that you can't," she says by way of explanation. "We're all like that."

But because her company doesn't advertise, she knows that a big part of her job at Newman's Own Organics is to get media attention for both her cookies and her causes. Without her connection to celebrity, it is unlikely Newman would be such a sought-after spokeswoman for efforts to promote organic food and improve farming practices, most notably the movement to stop genetically modified crops. And certainly she would not have been able to piggyback on the only multimillion dollar food company in the country that gives away all of its profits.

Newman's Own Organics is by no means the biggest player in the $6 billion natural food industry, but it is a player - especially when it comes to cookies.

"We have six out of the top 10 cookies in the category," she says, thanks in no small part to the clever names like Champion Chip, the very popular Fig Newmans and Newman-O's, the politically correct Oreo.

But even after a lifetime of it, Newman sometimes forgets the effect the double-whammy of her looks and her name can have. Consider the day in 1995 when she was in one of her favorite local grocery stores. Her line of organic chocolate bars had just come out. She was nervous that her candy bars, probably her favorite among the company's products, wouldn't sell.

Newman saw a woman standing in front of the chocolate bar display and moved a little closer.

"I hear that one's pretty good," she said, pointing at her latest product. The woman recognized her from the package.

"She sort of backed away. I think it shocked her."

Newman doesn't do that anymore.

"I'm over it."Ô

Newman lives in a single-story house on a Santa Cruz side street. The home, just a little over a thousand square feet, was built in 1947 and had been well- maintained by its previous owners.

Back in the early 1990s, when Newman moved in after a short marriage to an environmental engineer, she had some of the tile and floors redone with non- toxic paint and materials. But it didn't need much other work. And even though the kitchen is barely big enough to hold a couple of surfboards, she didn't

remodel it. She liked the double turquoise sink and the vintage blue Wedgewood stove too much.

Outside, a small yard is crowded with raised gardening beds, a converted garage that houses her paper-filled office and large shed that holds surfing gear. Her boyfriend - a surfer and an artist who restores old Volkswagen buses as a hobby - spent part of July and August helping her paint the outside.

Newman thought the color blue, called "wave," was too blue. And she was worried that her boyfriend, who she met over a year ago surfing and whose name she prefers to keep out of the press, might get paint on her rose bushes or the most prized item in her yard - a white Babcock peach tree.

The tree is covered with nets to prevent birds from eating the perfumey fruit. Each July, Newman stays in town to make sure she can harvest each sweet piece. A gift of one of Nell's peaches is a big deal. She recently shipped a few back to her youngest sister, Clea, who still lives in the family's home state, Connecticut. Her sister had taken a serious fall from a horse and Nell thought the peaches would cheer her up.

The near-sacred peach tree is in direct contrast to the only thing at her house that seems decidedly inorganic and strangely macho: a pristine, blue 2000 BMW M Coupe that is covered by a big white tent in the driveway. She's so tickled by it that the owner's certificate, curled from the steam of daily showers, is tucked behind the mirror in the bathroom.

The zippy sports car is a concession to her love of racing, something she got from her father. Paul Newman co-owns an Indy car and, even at 76, is still a sports car driver in his own right.

"He's held his own. He's not as fast as he needs to be but he is well respected," said Eric Gustafson, editor of Novato-based Sports Car International.

When Nell was 21 and had rolled a couple of cars, her dad enrolled her in a special driving school. "I had balls but not a lot of skill," she says. She immediately loved it and even landed an offer to be part of a racing team. Dad said unequivocally no. But she still loves fast cars.

Newman otherwise tries to live the sort of life that supports her belief that farmers shouldn't have to poison the ground to grow food, that most corporations don't put the best interest of people first and that each one of us should live as simply and chemically free as possible.

"She walks her talk and has a good, solid vision about how to mainstream organic food. She doesn't compromise. And her Newman-O's kick ass," says Michael Straus, a member of an organic dairy farming family and the director of Beyond Organic, a PR and marketing business that focuses on farming and environmental issues.

Even Newman's competitors like her. Linda Gerwig is the marketing manager for Barbara's Bakery in Petaluma, which is the biggest challenger to Newman's organic cookie kingdom and gives them a run in the salty snack category, too. Gerwig says the competition is friendly in large part because people in the organic food business are working for causes they believe in.

"She is just a wonderful human being. She's very personable, and she is true to her beliefs, which is what natural foods is all about," Gerwig said.

Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, a recipient of some of Newman's peaches, has been an informal mentor since Newman moved to Northern California in 1988. Newman's first few meals at Chez Panisse helped her figure out that organic food didn't mean compromising deliciousness. In fact, eating at Chez Panisse helped inspire the company motto: "Great products that happen to be organic."

Waters admires Newman's authenticity: "You know what I love about her? That she has remained so unaffected even though she has a father like that."

A movie lot dropout

Nell Newman has also dabbled in the other family business, movies. Woodward and Newman, whose film careers began in the 1950s, first met on Broadway. Then they starred together in "The Long, Hot Summer." Newman divorced his first wife, with whom he had three children, and married Woodward in 1958. The couple, who have what is considered one of Hollywood's most enduring marriages,

had three daughters, Elinor (Nell), Melissa and Clea.

Both parents have Oscars, Woodward for "The Three Faces of Eve" in 1957, and Newman for "The Color of Money" in 1986. Newman has made 70 movies, and directed a handful more. He even directed Nell twice. The first was in "Rachel,

Rachel," Newman's first directorial effort. The 1968 movie starred Woodward as a lonely schoolteacher. Nell played the lead character as a girl. The film got four Oscar nominations.

A few years later, Nell Newman was in the hard-to-find "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds," a 1972 film based on a Pulitzer PrizeÐwinning play by Paul Zindel. In it, Nell plays a quiet science nerd.

"It was early typecasting," Nell said.

The family grew up shuttling back and forth between Beverly Hills and Westport, Conn., where her parents still live. Despite her movie experience, Nell wasn't much of a Hollywood brat. She didn't pal around with other kids of famous people, although she admits to an elementary school romance with Tyrone Power Jr. and likes to tell stories about her godfather, Newman family friend Gore Vidal.

Acting was never her career choice. "By the time I grew up, acting just seemed like something I'd already done. I had absolutely no interest in it, even though some people thought it would be my calling," she said.

In fact, none of the sisters wanted to be movie stars.

"Most children of famous parents try to find a niche, which is not even in the same business," said Clea Newman, six years younger than Nell and a major fundraiser for Pegasus Therapeutic Riding, an East Coast organization that brings horseback riding to the disabled.

"You have to be true to yourself. And I think that's tough when you don't have your own identity, when you're constantly somebody's kid," she says. "It's not a knock against having famous parents, but it is a different reality from other people."

Whether they wanted to act or not, the Newman-Woodward children were encouraged to make their own way, and to somehow make a difference in the world.

For Nell, nature presented that opportunity. She grew up surrounded by the woods of rural Connecticut. There was always a garden and even chickens. Dad took her fishing, something she still pursues. But birds caught her attention early. By 8, she had a falcon.

"I was really frustrated because I couldn't fly. Seriously," she said.

Before she was a teenager, she began to build her cache of nearly impeccable left-wing credentials after she learned that the peregrine falcon was on the verge of extinction because of applications of DDT. "Extinction was a difficult concept for a 10-year-old," she said.

"We're all kind of environmentalist in our own way in this family, but Nell is a true believer," said Clea. "She is so dedicated. She's the one you always get little articles and little blurbs in the mail from. She is constantly giving you information. Mostly, her dedication is absolutely straight from the heart."

After a mix of public and private schools on both coasts left her behind in her studies, Newman dropped out of high school at 16. She explored different pursuits, did some some falcon work and spent time in and out of different colleges. She even tried acting school. As parents euphemistically say about their children, she took some time to find herself.

"I found little that was interesting," she said.

But at 25, her GED in hand, she found a college she liked and secured a bachelor's degree in human ecology from the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Her dad asked her what the hell she was going to do with a degree like that. She told him what her college counselors always said: "Human ecologists make their own niches."

Newman headed to New York to work for the Environmental Defense Fund, figured out she hated city life and quickly turned toward the other coast, moving across the country with a boyfriend. She worked first at the Ventana Wilderness Sanctuary Research and Education Center at Big Sur. Then she went to work for the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, raising money to re- establish the peregrine falcon population. Along the way she fell in love with surfing and Northern California.

She also had the epiphany that led to the organic food business. The bird group in Santa Cruz had been testing falcon eggs that hadn't hatched because of contaminants. Some were so bad, they had to be disposed of like toxic waste.

She and several lab workers decided to test their own blood.

Newman found DDT, HCBs and chlordane, a termite pesticide, in her blood. And she hadn't even been in direct contact with the eggs.

"What I discovered was that just by eating normally we all have background levels of contaminants." That realization eventually led to an organic line of Newman's Own. "I was just really tired of trying to raise money. So I thought I would do what Dad did and get into the food business."

Newman's father started his company 18 years ago as a joke, really. Paul Newman and a friend, "Papa Hemingway" author A.E. Hotchner, used to mix up tubs of oil and vinegar dressing and pour it into old wine bottles. The dressings were Christmas gifts for friends and neighbors in the family's Westport, Conn., neighborhood. They became almost unmanageably popular. Newman is a philanthropist and a philosopher of sorts, so he figured he could sell the dressing and make some money for charity.

The Christmas vinaigrette was the first product. The company has since expanded to pasta sauces, salsas, popcorn, lemonade, ice cream and steak sauce.

Newman's Own also is sold in Iceland and Australia and Israel, and thousands of charities have benefited.

On her own

Nell has a terrific palate, and often tests recipes to develop new Newman's organic products. And she has long been the star cook of the family. In fact, it was her ability to make a perfect Thanksgiving dinner that convinced her dad to give organics a go.

Nell thought Newman's Own ought to use more

organic ingredients. But Paul Newman, who equated organic with tasteless, didn't jump on the idea. So one Thanksgiving Nell Newman carried home some organic food from Northern California - yellow Finn potatoes, free-range turkey and the like - and made the feast. Only after he had praised dinner did she tell her father everything had been organic.

Nell had already shared the vision of an organic Newman line with Peter Meehan, a longtime family friend and business whiz who used to clean Newman's pool. Nell Newman didn't even know he had sold his pool maintenance business and moved from the East Coast to the West until she heard him being thanked on- air for a public radio pledge. She tracked him down and they went into business together.

That first year, Paul Newman agreed to pay them each a $15,000 salary to research the intricacies involved in manufacturing organic snacks. And he promised a small amount of startup money that would have to be paid back once the company was up and running.

They knew their first product would have to be one that Paul would like, so they focused on his favorite snack, pretzels - which was also the hottest item in the salty snack category in the early 1990s. But it couldn't be some whole- grain, health-food sort of pretzel. "He would have called it a dog bone," Nell said.

They decided to make their products taste as close to the sort of thing America already liked to snack on as possible. "Dad said, ÔAll right. Go do it,

but do it right,' " Nell recalls. "I had to protect his name and image, and I had to make an impact. He said, ÔI don't want you to save just one wheat field in Kansas. I want you to make a difference.' "

Paul Newman doesn't meddle much, but they have to make sure he likes the new products. And they have to be careful about competing products. When they wanted to make organic microwave popcorn, which hits the shelves in October, they had to get his blessing since he has a line of popcorn out too. It helped that they tied it back to him with the name: "Pop's Corn."

Actually, Paul Newman loves a creative name. And he doesn't mind pulling the movie star thing when he needs to. When Meehan dreamed up the name Fig Newman, he and Nell never thought they could get Nabisco to allow them to parody one of its most famous products. But Paul Newman fell in love with the name and he started a campaign of sorts. Nell suspects he leaked it to his good friend, David Letterman, who used it in a top 10 list of products Paul Newman hadn't made yet, No. 1 just in front of "Newman's Own super tight underpants."

Next, he whipped off a humble, folksy letter to the president of Nabisco that ended with an invitation to hoist a beer.

Within a couple of weeks, the head of Nabisco said they would license the name to Newman's Own Organics essentially for free.

"We're all on pins and needles about the name and he calls me up like a ninth-grader and says, ÔWe got it!' " Nell said. "He knew it would sell cookies, which is why he did it. And the more we sell, the more we can give away. And that's really what we do."

At the end of each year, the small Newman's Own Organic staff gets to pick which charities get tens of thousands of dollars in profits, as do a few of the people in the national network of manufacturers and packers who are contracted to actually handle the products.

The first year, the man who developed the pretzel recipe got to give away $1,000. The next year it was the women who packed the pretzels.

The list of charities now includes one of Nell's favorites, the garden and farm project at the University of California at Santa Cruz, a sustainable farm that serves as sort of a cooperative extension service for California's organic farmers.

"It's everything you won't learn at UC Davis," Newman says. Other favorites include a senior citizens' recycling program in Santa Cruz and a counseling program in the Midwest that helps prevent suicide among farmers facing bankruptcy. Even more conventional charities like the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Cruz and the humane society get a taste.

Organic future

There is no sign on the door of Newman's Own Organics. It's on the second floor of a gray building in what passes for a tiny strip mall in Aptos. It is a collection of four or five rooms, with industrial-grade carpet and a small kitchen where products are sampled and ideas are born. Posters of Paul Newman hawking almost every single one of Newman's Own products hang on the wall, along with a big blowup of the father-daughter logo that dominates.

Peter Meehan is at the office most every day. Nell comes in about once a week, but she spends time visiting the people who grow the company's raw material and working the media. She develops new products, markets them and serves as the public face for the company. It is up to Meehan to wrestle with most of the nitty-gritty headaches of the organic food business.

For example, he's got to find manufacturers who understand why using all- organic sunflower oil and keeping the equipment free of any residue from other nonorganic food is so important. And there is the matter of finding suppliers who can offer corn that has no trace of genetically modified material. Or, one of his favorite coups, figuring out that healthier palm oil could work in place of the hydrogenated oil that gives so many processed foods like cookies and crackers their familiar mouth feel.

The biggest challenge may be keeping costs down, which is why Newman's Own organics aren't always 100 percent organic. Fig Newmans, for example, are made from only about 80 percent organic ingredients. That's because securing ingredients like, say, organic vanilla, can be difficult. And some ingredients are just too expensive. Using them would price their products out of the market.

"People would salute us but no one would buy it because it would be too expensive," Meehan says.

Newman, meanwhile, fights off challenges from the left about any number of perceived missteps, like the environmental impact her packaging has. Some of her suppliers are being forced to pay for expensive testing to make sure no genetically altered material get into their corn crops. And she worries that in a market where small organic companies are being gobbled up by big food conglomerates like General Mills, she might lose her sources for organic ingredients.

So she just keeps at it. She plans to continue her work speaking at organic food conferences, pushing to stop genetically modified crops and speaking up for family farmers. And she plans to surf every day and fish as often as she can.

She won't be selling the business, though. She can't imagine anyone wanting to buy a company where all the profits are given away.

And besides, she couldn't sell the family name.

"What choice do I have? They're called Fig Newmans."