Paul Newman speaks out: I'm NOT battling lung cancer

The actor's representative Toni Howard dismissed the claims as simply  "not true"

Her statement follows weeks of speculation regarding the Cat On A Hot Tin Roof star's health which began circulating when he was photographed looking gaunt at a charity fundraiser.

The 83-year-old Oscar-winner kept his blue eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses and sported a wispy grey beard as he stepped out at the event for children with cancer accompanied by his wife Joanne Woodward.

Brave: Ailing Paul Newman stepped out with US domestic doyen Martha Stewart last week

Newman has been in ill health for many months and in May was forced to pull out of directing a production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men.

He was reported to have visited the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, a few hours from his Connecticut home.

A friend of the actor told a U.S. magazine: 'We have known he is seriously ill for several weeks but his loved ones are being very protective and saying very little.'

Newman denied previous cancer reports in March after he missed a fundraising event for his Hole In The Wall Gang children's charity. The same month, he cancelled a talk show appearance.

Hollywood icon: Paul Newman (left) with Robert Redford in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid'

He has made light of his health problems, saying in January: 'I am being treated for athlete's foot and hair loss - unless the doctors know something I don't.'

Newman retired from acting last year.

He said: 'I've been doing it for 50 years. That's enough.

'I'm not able to work any more as an actor at the level I would want to. You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention.'