Steve McQueen: So Tough

"I live for myself and I answer to nobody."

Every film fan can recall the moment when they realised that movies were a pretty cool thing to be interested in. As a supposedly serious film writer, my epiphany ought to have occurred during something profound like the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin or the awesome, 'Rosebud'-revealing climax of Citizen Kane, but it didn't. No, for me, the first time films became something more than moving wallpaper was the first time I saw Steve McQueen speeding towards the Swiss border on a motorcycle being chased by what looked like the entire Third Reich in The Great Escape.

McQueen's amazing bike chase is the sort of ludicrous, film-stealing moment that appears on few actors' CVs. Even really big stars don't often get the opportunity to do something so effortlessly cool and iconic. What makes McQueen's filmography so remarkable is that he had status-establishing incidents in virtually all of the films he made. The car chase in Bullitt, the chess scene seduction in The Thomas Crown Affair, the "we deal in lead, friend" line in The Magnificent Seven, practically every scene in The Getaway. McQueen's career was a veritable cutting book of classic scenes.

'The King of Cool' was, in fact, one of the many titles Steve McQueen had to shoulder during his short life. 'Arch-chauvinist.' 'Limited actor.' 'The new Paul Newman.' He was lumbered with each of these epithets at one time or another. While some of the titles were accurate (McQueen actively pursued Newman's crown and made no secret of his dislike of feminism) and others were downright unfair (within his range, Hollywood had never produced a talent to rival him), it was McQueen's coolness that the papers would always refer back to. Even today, almost twenty years after his death, it's the Rolex-wearing, fast-car driving McQueen that biographers marvel over and advertisers exploit. Hipness has guaranteed Steve McQueen a place in Hollywood's Hall of Fame but it has also distracted people from his very real talents and from his true status, not as a phantom of fashion, but as a king of genuine courage.

"I'm out of the Midwest. It was a good place to come from. It gives you a sense of right or wrong and fairness, which is lacking in our society."

Terrence Steven McQueen was born on 24 March 1930 in Beech Grove, Indiana, his name the only gift from a father he never knew. Years later, McQueen would reminisce about the "good grounding" and "strong values" that his Mid-Western upbringing had given him. The reality, however, was far less romantic. A gang member from the moment he could walk, the young Steve seemed set for a career as a petty thief and vandal until one run-in too many with the law led to him being sentenced to the infamous Boys Republic reform school in Chino, California. Scared straight during his eighteen months there, he left a semi-reformed character and promptly enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Since he was already a big fan of bikes and motor vehicles, McQueen enjoyed his duties as a mechanic and tank driver but continued to have trouble with authority figures. So it was that after three years service he received an honourable discharge and, after drifting around the States and the Caribbean, settled in New York, taking on a hundred and one different jobs to pursue his two new loves: acting and motorcycles.

No one's quite sure how and why the tough, masculine McQueen fell in love with the relatively effete world of acting. A way to meet women? A step up from his previous careers as a circus barker and Cuban brothel 'bouncer'? Both are possible explanations. More convincing than either, however, is an apparent realisation on McQueen's behalf that his colourful youth had provided him with experiences that could usefully inform his performances. Whatever the real reason for Steve taking to the boards, it wasn't long before theatre school and off-Broadway productions transformed into television contracts.

The gigs were small to begin with: an uncredited role in the Paul Newman vehicle Somebody Up There Likes Me; minor parts in Goodyear Television Playhouse productions; and underwhelming Westerns. It wasn't financially rewarding work but it provided McQueen with enough exposure to land the role of Josh Randall in the TV horse opera Wanted: Dead Or Alive. The show that did for McQueen what Rawhide had done for Clint Eastwood, it eventually came off air in 1961, by which time Steve had starred in The Magnificent Seven and become a bona fide film celebrity.

From here, his rise to high estate didn't take long. In 1963, less than fifteen years after he'd taken up acting, he was billed ahead of Richard Attenborough, James Garner and Magnificent Seven co-stars James Coburn and Charles Bronson in The Great Escape. Three years later, he was Oscar nominated for his bravura turn in war epic The Sand Pebbles. He did pretty well on the business front, too, setting up Solar, the production company behind hits like Nevada Smith, The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt. A second development deal with First Artists founders Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman, Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman proved less fruitful but was a potent symbol of his star power. And then in 1974, eighteen years after appearing beside him unbilled, McQueen co-starred with Newman in The Towering Inferno, capping him in both the credit and capital stakes in the process. In terms of income, Steve had outstripped Newman years before. Indeed, with a salary of $5 million a movie, Steve McQueen was the highest paid actor in the world.

"I have to be careful because I'm a limited actor. I mean, my range isn't very great. There's a whole lot of stuff I can't do, so I have to find characters and situations that feel right. Even then, when I've got something that fits, it's a hell of a lot of work. I'm not a serious actor. There's something about my shaggy-dog eyes that makes people think I'm good. I'm not all that good."

Act, of course, is the one thing a lot of people claim McQueen couldn't do. Those that say this ignore the fact that Steve studied at the Neighbourhood Playhouse, won a scholarship to the prestigious Herbert-Bergoff Drama School and in 1955, he and Martin Landau (Crimes & Misdemeanours, Ed Wood, Space 1999) were the only two actors out of the 2,000 who auditioned to gain entrance to Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio, a prestigious seat of learning whose graduates include Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe.

All great actors have certain tricks that enable them to transform the vacuous into the compelling. Whenever Robert Redford wants to give the impression he is thinking, he rolls the food around his mouth when he eats. Jack Lemon, when he wants to register disgust, clamps a hand to his stomach as if he's about to be sick. And when Klaus Kinski wanted to suggest that he was as mad in front of the camera as he was behind it, he spiralled into shot.

Foremost amongst Steve McQueen's armoury was 'the smile,' so disarming that you imagine Thomas Crown co-star Faye Dunaway would have swooned even if the script hadn't told her to, and so winning that you really understand why Richard Attenborough and Gordon Jackson don't get too upset when they discover that that bloody tunnel is fifty feet too short. If the grin itself was good, it was all the better for being teamed with the only pair of eyes in Hollywood that were bluer than Paul Newman's.

Equally crucial to McQueen's popularity was his physique. At 5 feet 6 inches and 150 pounds, he was neither a tall nor thick set man. He wasn't particularly muscular either - a punishing, two-hours-a-day exercise regime left him looking more like a middle-distance runner than Charles Atlas. But just as the spindly Tom Cruise gets more fan mail than Arnold Schwarzenneger (a man once described as having a body like a 'condom stuffed full of walnuts'), so McQueen's lean, hairless torso made him a much bigger sex symbol than the far brawnier Charles Bronson. (Bronson only became a true star when, aware that he couldn't compete with the muscle-bound action heroes of the mid-70s, he started to exude a brand of stealth and charm not unlike McQueen's.) Whatever it was that made his chest attractive, a top-off shot became a prerequisite for a McQueen movie.

Steve's willingness to take his kit off wasn't inspired by vanity. It was simply a case of someone playing to their strengths. In the same way he also learnt how to use the camera, not so much to make himself look good but to disguise his limitations. The quest to compensate for his lack of size and maximise his screen presence led to McQueen cultivating a shot that would appear in most of his films. It worked like this... The first image of Steve on screen would be a tight close-up of the back of his head emphasising the muscles in his neck and the broadness of his shoulders. He would then turn towards the camera, flashing either his smile or eyes or, better still, both. It was a simple shot but one that made McQueen look simultaneously strong and beautiful. What's more, when it took place on a screen some seventy feet wide and twenty four feet high, it left you in no doubt that Steve McQueen was a screen-filling talent.

The smile, the eyes, the body, the angles - they were McQueen's tools. If they were all he'd had at his disposal, he might still have become a leading actor, maybe even a star. That he became an icon stemmed in part from his understanding of acting in general and screen acting in particular. Thanks to his time on Wanted: Dead Or Alive and his appearances in a whole bunch of movies that nobody ever saw (Never Love A Stranger, The Blob, The Great St Louis Bank Robbery), he'd been able to work out that you have to do very little on camera to convey emotion (see McQueen's comedy performances to see how bad eye-rolling makes you look on screen). He must also have been aware that there are some guys who the camera simply loves and, since he was one of those lucky chaps, he really didn't need to twitch and squint to get attention. A willingness to listen and take advice didn't do McQueen any harm, either. Indeed, after John Sturges took him to one side on the set of The Great Escape and told him to react rather than act, his performances improved immeasurably. But as with all our favourite actors, there is also something else, an ingredient X that transforms the good into the great. In McQueen's case, it would appear to be the gift that John Travolta (who also possesses it) identified as the ability to convey a thought the moment it comes into the head. Unfortunately, Travolta has squandered his special power on ghastly baby talk movies and screen rot like Phenomenon and Michael. Steve McQueen, on the other hand, used his gift to make him a legend.

(It might have taken the 'serious' critics a while to wake up to his acting talent, but Steve's performances didn't go completely unrecognised. Beside his Oscar nomination for The Sand Pebbles, he received Golden Globe nods for Pebbles, Papillon and surprisingly, The Reivers. Outside of awards for performing, Steve won the World's Film Favourite Golden Globe in 1967 and 1970 and picked up Photoplay's Most Popular Male Star gong in 1968.)

The other key to Steve's megastardom was his identifying himself with a particular type of character: silent, actionful, alone. McQueen's preferred screen persona superficially sounds like every other film action hero. However, Steve was willing to do things on camera that Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis and the like would only rarely contemplate. For one thing, he was happy for his characters to die if the story called for it (Hell Is For Heroes, Tom Horn) and early in his career he'd even cry on camera (The Great St Louis Bank Robbery). For another, while they give the impression that they don't need anybody, some of his characters form genuine, life-enhancing friendships (Charrière's bond with Louis in Papillon, Hilts' relationship with Ives in The Great Escape, Vin's rapport with the rest of The Magnificent Seven). And while, as in real life, McQueen always gets the girl, the relationships are seldom smooth (Love With The Proper Stranger, The Hunter), occasionally violent (Baby, The Rain Must Fall, The Getaway) and are sometimes dissolved by the time the movie ends (The Cincinnati Kid, The Thomas Crown Affair, Junior Bonner). In fact, the only thing Steve's screen incarnations have in common with the regular Hollywood action hero is that a lot of them ride off into the sunset (The Magnificent Seven, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Getaway), although even this movie cliché wasn't all it was cracked up to be in McQueen's hands as his characters sometimes disappear into uncertainty (The Cincinnati Kid, Junior Bonner, Papillon). So, while he will forever appear in lists of great Hollywood action heroes, Steve McQueen on camera wasn't quite like the other boys. He was a mixture of made man and misfit, ice-cool loner and lukewarm companion. He was, in fact, very much like the real Steve McQueen.

"They call me a chauvinist pig - I am and I don't give a damn!"

There's no disputing the paradoxical nature of Steve McQueen. He was a lousy husband (the only one of his three wives he didn't cheat on was number three, Barbara Minty, and that was probably because he was too sick) but he was also an excellent father. He liked to be thought of as a man completely in control of his destiny but he was a slave to tarot cards and horoscopes (alarmed to hear that satanic rituals had been held outside his Palm Springs ranch, he consulted a psychic who warned him that these 'witches' were: "praying for your death. They are concentrating that you should die at your own hand. They would like you to get further into drugs. They would like for you to begin racing cars. Whatever you do, don't get into any cars that are a combination of red and black." From that day on, Steve never raced red or black autos). And while he courted the image of a loner, he built up a team of artists and technicians that he worked with time and again: directors Sam Peckinpah, John Sturges, Norman Jewison, Robert Wise and Robert Mulligan; personal manager Hillard Elkins; producers and Solar associates Jack N Reddish and Robert E Relyea; actors Robert Vaughn, Don Gordon, Vic Tayback, Dub Taylor and Paul Fix; cinematographer Fred Koenekamp; writer/assistant director Walter Hill; designer Theadora Van Runckle; composer Lalo Schifrin; and stuntmen Bud Ekins, Carey Loftin and Loren Janes.

By far the most unattractive aspect of the many-faced McQueen was his sexism and homophobia. The latter seemed to have its origins in the rumour that was spread around Hollywood in the mid-60s that Steve's marriage was a sham and he was actually homosexual. The former had a lot to do with the age in which McQueen was raised and the fact that, as a Marine, movie star and motor-racing driver, he'd spent his life working in three of the world's most sexist professions.

As unattractive as his attitudes were, I don't think they should pose a barrier to saluting McQueen. We now live in an age when, the moment we discover anything unappetising about one of our heroes, we turn on them as if they were Oswald Moseley. So what if Martin Luther King was a serial adulterer or Winston Churchill was a racist or David Bowie once said that what this country needs it a good fascist dictatorship? At the end of the day wouldn't you rather have Steve McQueen, a sexist dinosaur but a great star, than, say, pussy-whipped Ethan Hawke. At least ex-Marine McQueen suggested he might actually be able to pull off the same stuff his characters did. You cannot say the same for the current generation of leading men - pudgy Matt Damon, ladyboy Leonardo DiCaprio or lissom Jude Law.

"Stardom equals freedom. It's the only equation that matters."

And even if you are of the opinion that Steve was the world's worst gay-baiting homophobe, it's hard not to be impressed by the McQueen catalogue of cool.

i) He received martial arts tuition from Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. Indeed, for a couple of years Steve trained in the same dojo as Norris, The Dragon and James Coburn - they must have had a hell of job getting all of their egos into the room simultaneously. There has been a lot of speculation over exactly how good McQueen was at either Karate or jeet kune do, Lee's specially devised discipline. The uncertainty stems from the fact that, since he didn't want his expertise used against him should he ever be sued, McQueen never studied for belts (he never used his skills on screen either although he did talk about making a martial arts documentary, provisionally titled Mind Like Water). In lieu of recognised ranking, we'll just have to accept the opinion of Chuck Norris who thought Steve possessed the skills and discipline of a third dan black belt. As for McQueen's relationship with Bruce Lee, it soured after Steve learned that the martial artist had received $3 million to star in Enter The Dragon (1973, dir Robert Clouse). McQueen, by contrast, had earned a paltry $2 million for starring in Papillon. Although their friendship fell apart, Steve, Coburn and Norris served as pall-bearers at Lee's Seattle funeral.

ii) He was a successful motor-racing driver. Steve owned cars, bikes and airplanes and could propel all at truly frightening speeds (he drove a terrified Bruce Lee through the tight curves of Mulholland Drive at 140mph and was kicked out of the Carnegie Technical Institute for riding his motorbike up and down the corridors). His professional achievements included patenting a racing car seat, taking Mario Andretti to the limit in the Sebring International Twelve Hour Endurance Race, representing Team USA at the International Six Day Trials in East Germany and appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1971. While it has been suggested that Steve's success owed more to bloody-mindedness than genuine talent, he was certainly a lot more comfortable behind the wheel than that bloke out of Boyzone who keeps crashing.

iii) He was stalked by Charles Manson. More to the point, had he not been on a date with one of his women, McQueen would have been at 10050 Cielo Drive when The Family murdered Sharon Tate (aka Mrs Roman Polanski), her unborn son Paul Richard Polanski and their friends Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski and celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring. Not content with calling himself Jesus, auditioning for The Monkees, hanging out with The Beach Boys and finding apocalyptic messages in The Beatles' White Album, Manson had made McQueen number one on his celebrity hit list (other Family targets included Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra and, rather surprisingly, Tom Jones). Despite the arrest and successful prosecution of Manson and his cronies, Steve never again left the house without a loaded revolver in his car's glove compartment. And what had McQueen done to incur 'Jesus Christ's' wrath? He failed to commission a script Manson had sent to Solar pictures in 1968. Incidentally, Steve wasn't the only person whom good fortune saved from The Family. Also invited but unable to attend Tate's soirée were Jeremy Lloyd, one-time husband of Joanna Lumley and co-creator of Brit sitcom Are You Being Served?, and author Jerzy Kosinski (Being There) who used the killings as the basis for his novel Blind Fate. As for the way Manson planned to kill McQueen, it was as the psychic had predicted - 'at his own hands.'

iv) He slept with the entire world. Steve dated some of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. His list of conquests included Cincinnati Kid co-star Ann-Margret, 'sock-it-to-me girl' Judy Carne, Jacqueline Bisset (his Bullitt love interest), Mamie Van Doren, the aforementioned Sharon Tate (who he'd met on the set of Soldier In The Rain and wanted cast in The Cincinnati Kid) and Thomas Crown's Faye Dunaway. His seduction of Ali McGraw is particularly legendary since a) it occurred while the pair were shooting The Getaway and b) it took place right under the nose of McGraw's husband, The Godfather/Chinatown/Rosemary's Baby producer Robert Evans. Although forged in intense circumstances, McGraw and McQueen's relationship, nevertheless, lasted seven years together. (Don't feel too sorry for raving egomaniac Evans, mind. As Paramount President Frank Yablans told Peter Biskind in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls; "Evans pushed them together. He created the break-up with Ali, the public cuckolding. 'Bob, you're going to lose your wife. These two are going at it hot and heavy.' 'It's just a passing thing.' He didn't give a shit. It didn't matter to him. He's a very strange man. He couldn't be married, couldn't live a normal sane life. He drove her out.")

v) His drugs intake was what Terrence McKenna would describe as 'heroic.' We're not just talking beer, whisky, tobacco and marijuana, either. At the height of his fame, Steve was using LSD to expand his mind and amyl nitrate to expand his underpants. He also took cocaine which almost cost him his life when, in 1970, he took a couple of friends for a spin around the Le Mans circuit while high. The car crashed, the passengers were hospitalised and the incident was hushed up until after Steve's death.

vi) He was a fully qualified stuntman. Contrary to popular belief Steve didn't perform the motorcycle leap in The Great Escape nor most of the stunt driving in Bullitt (on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show, Steve openly admitted that his friend Bud Ekins had jumped the barbwire fence). He did, however, do all the bull riding, bronco bustin' and calf wrestlin' in Junior Bonner and was made an honorary member of the Stuntman's Association Of Motion Pictures in 1977. As for his equestrian skills, Tom Horn cinematographer John A Alonzo recalls that: "I've never seen anyone handle a horse better. He would get on Buster with a rifle and fire at full gallop. He was going as fast as the horse could go and he handled it beautifully." (McQueen had overcome his fear of horses and his inability to ride to get the role of Josh Randall in Wanted: Dead Or Alive.)

vii) He made President Richard Nixon's infamous 'Enemies' list. The government started to pursue Steve after he intimated that he would participate in Martin Luther King's 1963 Washington march (in the end, McQueen couldn't attend but he fully endorsed the good Doctor's work). Throughout the rest of his career, he was the subject of countless FBI reports and was closely scrutinised by the paranoid Nixon. It's hard to know quite why McQueen was considered so suspicious, although his popularity in Eastern Europe in general and Russia in particular might provide some explanation.

viii) He was a fashion guru. McQueen's style coups included having a Rolex named after him (The Rolex Explorer II [ref. 1655] is officially known as the 'McQueen Rolex') and making the Heuer Monaco wristwatch which he sported in Le Mans so popular that it was re-released in the 1990s (Giovanni Ribisi's crooked dealer wears one in Ben Younger's Boiler Room). Steve was also the first man ever to appear on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. While his contract allowed him to keep the Italian suits he wore in The Thomas Crown Affair, Steve's favourite outfit remained one he'd been wearing since long time before he arrived in Hollywood - T-shirt and jeans.

"I believe in me. I'm a little screwed up but I'm beautiful."

And then there is the McQueen legacy: his two children. Terri Leslie tragically succumbed to liver cancer after putting up the sort of fight that her father would have been proud. Chad(wick) Steven carved out a career as an actor, producer and stuntman in spite of the pressure of having every exec in the world say to him: 'I loved your Dad in The Getaway/Bullit/The Magnificent Seven etc.'

Compared to some of his contemporaries (Paul Newman, Yul Brynner, James Coburn, Charles Bronson), McQueen's filmography is incredibly short (just 27 films in a 22-year career). And as for his canon of quality pictures, well, it's positively puny. It is perhaps for this reason that critics and fans have a tendency to dwell upon the pictures McQueen didn't make. He chose not to appear in Ocean's Eleven, Dirty Harry, The French Connection and Ice Station Zebra. He wasn't allowed to star in Breakfast At Tiffany's because Wanted: Dead Or Alive wouldn't release him. He was kicked off Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid because Paul Newman was worried that Steve would upstage him. And he simply didn't live to make Hang Tough, Aussie Western Quigley Down Under and motorcycle drama The Last Ride.

While a third of his films are almost unwatchable and only half of his movies are any good, Steve McQueen made enough excellent pictures for us to overlook his unrealised work. Indeed, besides his pretty decent films (The Sand Pebbles, The Thomas Crown Affair, Love With The Proper Stranger, The Towering Inferno, The Cincinnati Kid), Steve made three films that would appear on any list of classic films from the 60s (The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, Bullitt) and another three that would have to appear on a similar survey of 70s cinema (Junior Bonner, The Getaway, Papillon). Steve wasn't only good when surrounded by the likes of Richard Attenborough, Yul Brynner, Robert Preston and Ben Johnson, however. Even when the films were crap, McQueen could be red hot. And while pictures like The War Lover, Nevada Smith and Tom Horn are part of the reason McQueen's work has never been taken seriously it is, ironically, Steve's superior acting in sub-standard movies and in poor company that marks him out as a truly great acting talent.

Twenty years after his death, Steve McQueen is still a part of our lives. In the month that this book was put to bed, a horse called Papillon won The Martell Grand National at Aintree, the news broke that Hitler himself had ordered that 50 of the 'Great Escape' POWs be shot (no points for guessing which film clips were used to illustrate that story), and the Bullitt-inspired Ford Puma advertisement began to air again. The commercial, created by Young & Rubicam, is a real piece of work. The special effects used to lift shots of McQueen out of Peter Yates' cop classic are impressive enough in themselves. But the CGI alone can't explain why the advertisement works so well. No, that has a lot to do with the star. As Y&R's Paul Venn explains; "we were looking for a spokesman who could represent the Puma's character. The exhilarating drive, the true style, the daring personality. All the research groups we held told us that McQueen possessed those characteristics." Or to quote Pete Smith, managing director of Virnwood Ford in Dorset; "It's a bloody great piece of advertising. No other actor would have worked. I mean, who is there these days? They're all a load of poofs, this new lot. A load of woollies! There's no one as good as McQueen!"

I think that says it all, really.