American Legends: The Life of Steve McQueen - Paperback

by Charles River (Author)

*Includes pictures.
*Includes McQueen's quotes about his own life and career.
*Includes a bibliography for further reading.

"I live for myself and I answer to nobody." - Steve McQueen

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

In the 1960s and 1970s, no actor personified cool, calm and collected like Steve McQueen, whose suave anti-hero protagonists made men jealous and women swoon. As actor Donald Logue puts it in The Tao of Steve, "Steve is the prototypical cool American male. He's the guy on his horse, the guy alone. He has his own code of honor, his own code of ethics, his own rules of living. He never, ever tries to impress the women, but he always gets the girl." And indeed, that was the case not only in movies like The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, The Getaway, and Papillon, but also in real life. Actress Ali MacGraw, who later became one of his wives, described his effect on women: "I remember seeing him across the swimming pool and my knees were knocking. He radiated such macho energy. Men wanted to be like him. Uptight society ladies and biker molls wanted to be with him."

Unlike many actors who become this type of heartthrob, McQueen seemed to have the bona fides. Growing up rough and tough in the Midwest, McQueen was sent to a juvenile facility California because he didn't get along with his stepfather, and after that there he became a Marine. Like Jim Dean before him, McQueen also loved to race, and before he became an actor, he was actually making a living winning races in New York. As he once put it, "Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting."

However, McQueen was destined to become "The King of Cool" on screen, and after a few quick stints in acting jobs in the early 1950s, he began to look at it as an actual occupation. He once noted, "I really don't like to act. At the beginning, back in '51, I had to force myself to stick with it. I was real uncomfortable, real uncomfortable." Eventually, McQueen was comfortable enough to simply act natural and thus exude the tough confidence that made him an idol. That kind of performance translated well on the old TV Westerns, and a few of those, Tales of Wells Fargo and Trackdown, catapulted McQueen to the conscience of Hollywood. From there, it would only take a few years and a few movie appearances for McQueen to become a huge box office draw.

Sadly, McQueen's life and career were cut short by mesothelioma, a cancer closely associated with asbestos. Though there is still a debate over how McQueen contracted it, it quickly spread throughout his body, and no matter what he did in an attempt to beat it, he couldn't. McQueen died at just 50 years old, when he was still near the height of his acting career.

American Legends: The Life of Steve McQueen examines the life and career of one of America's most popular actors during the '60s and '70s. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Steve McQueen like never before, in no time at all.