For half a century, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward seemed to have something almost unheard of in Hollywood: a marriage that lasted.

They married in 1958 and remained together until Newman’s death in 2008. To generations of fans, their relationship became one of Hollywood’s great love stories.

But years later, their daughter Melissa Newman went through the attic of the family home in Westport, Connecticut — and nearly threw away something extraordinary.

Inside a battered bag, surrounded by the remains of years of storage, Melissa discovered the first 10 love letters her father had written to her mother.

They dated back to the 1950s, before Paul and Joanne were married.

And the Paul Newman revealed on those pages wasn’t simply the cool, reserved movie star audiences remembered.

He was intensely in love.

Melissa later described some of the letters as surprisingly passionate, playful and even a little “naughty.” Parts were so personal that she decided they couldn’t all be reproduced in her book about her parents, Head Over Heels.

But the letters also complicated the fairy-tale version of their romance.

When Newman and Woodward fell for one another, Newman was still married to his first wife, Jackie Witte, with whom he had three children. Melissa has openly acknowledged that her parents’ relationship began with consequences for other people.

Their marriage wasn’t perfect afterward, either. Newman struggled with drinking, and the couple endured arguments and difficult periods.

Yet they kept coming back to one another.

What Melissa found in that attic didn’t destroy the famous Newman-Woodward love story.

It made it more human.

Behind the glamorous photographs were two imperfect people whose relationship contained passion, mistakes, arguments, friendship and an extraordinary determination to remain together.

And perhaps the most remarkable part is how close those letters came to disappearing forever.

A bag that could easily have gone into the trash ended up preserving a private side of one of Hollywood’s most enduring marriages.