Terrence Steven McQueen was born on March 24, 1930, in Beech Grove, Indiana, the son of William McQueen, a barnstormer pilot who abandoned the family when Steve was six months old, and Julia Ann Crawford, who struggled with alcoholism. He was raised partly by his great-uncle Claude William Thomson in Slater, Missouri, and spent much of his childhood in neglect — his mother returned periodically but was unable to provide stable care. He ran away to Los Angeles at fourteen, joined a gang, and was eventually sent to the Boys Republic reform school in Chino, California, where his experience was apparently genuinely meaningful: he returned repeatedly as an adult to speak to the residents. He joined the US Marine Corps in 1947, where his undisciplined tendencies continued — he was demoted nine times in his service period — before he channeled his physical energy into acting.
Steve McQueen studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York under Sanford Meisner, and his early career included television work and theater before The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963) made him a star of the first order. The Great Escape — in which he played Capt. Virgil Hilts, 'the Cooler King,' a motorcycle-riding American POW whose cool practicality and spectacular escape attempt defined the character — made him globally recognizable and established the persona that would define his career: the man of few words and maximum competence; the cool pragmatist who thinks in solutions rather than problems; the individual who operates on his own terms regardless of institutional expectations.
McQueen's peak years — The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Nevada Smith (1966), The Sand Pebbles (1966, which earned him his only Academy Award nomination), Bullitt (1968), The Getaway (1972), Papillon (1973), and The Towering Inferno (1974) — made him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood and established him as one of cinema's defining masculine archetypes. The Bullitt car chase — a 10-minute sequence through San Francisco in which McQueen (performing much of the driving himself) pursues a Dodge Charger in his Ford Mustang 390 GT — remains one of the most celebrated action sequences in film history. His love of racing was not merely a movie persona: he raced motorcycles and cars at a professional level, competing in the 12 Hours of Sebring and attempting to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans (he was denied permission by his insurers).
Steve McQueen died on November 7, 1980, at age 50, from mesothelioma — a cancer caused by asbestos exposure, which he likely accumulated from the flame-retardant racing suits he wore throughout his career. His death was preceded by months of public attention on his unconventional cancer treatments in Juárez, Mexico, which attracted both criticism (from conventional medicine) and sympathy (from those who saw in his approach a refusal to go gently). He had converted to Christianity in his final year, a development that surprised many who knew him. He is survived by a son and a daughter from his first marriage to actress Neile Adams, and was briefly married twice more — to actress Ali MacGraw and model Barbara Minty. His cultural status — as an icon of cool, of the independent American spirit, of the male archetype that does rather than speaks — has only increased in the decades since his death.
