ACTOR ACTRESS ALI_MACGRAW BARBARA_MINTY BEN_MANKIEWICZ BRUCE_BROWN BRUCE_MEYER CHAD_MCQUEEN CLIFF_COLEMAN DUSTIN_HOFFMAN EDWARD_G_ROBINSON ED_SALVEN FAYE_DUNAWAY GARY_OLDMAN INTERVIEWER JOHN_GILMORE KATY_HABER KRISTIN_KREUK MAGNUS_WALKER MARIO_ISCOVICH MARISA_MILLER MARSHALL_TERRILL MOLLY_MCQUEEN NEILE_ADAMS_MCQUEEN NORMAN_JEWISON PAT_JOHNSON PAUL_NEWMAN PEIRCE_BROSNAN PETE_MASON PIERCE_BROSNAN RANDY_COUTURE ROBERT_DOWNEY_JR ROBERT_VAUGHN STEVEN_R_MCQUEEN STEVE_MCQUEEN ZOE_BELL GARY OLDMAN There's Steve McQueen, and then there's cool. GARY OLDMAN He walks onto the screen, and he kidnaps you. You just want to look at Steve McQueen. MARISA MILLER Steve had an edge. You can't fake the way he was. ALI MACGRAW Every man I met wanted to be him. Every woman wanted to sleep with him. Every kid wanted to be mentored by him. MOLLY MCQUEEN He was larger than life in the public eye and in our family. STEVEN R MCQUEEN I think what Steve stood for was impulse. CHAD MCQUEEN His need for speed was so fuckin' genuine. Speed was a fix that he had to have. STEVEN R MCQUEEN If he wanted to go fast, he would go fast. If he wanted to fight, he would fight. CHAD MCQUEEN And he would fight to the death to get his way. PIERCE BROSNAN Where does one begin to pick a favorite Steve McQueen movie? ZOE BELL The chase sequence in Bullitt. There's one massive slide-out-- waah! when he gets loose. Every single time, I'm like, RANDY COUTURE Those eyes... He could give you that stare, and you knew he meant business. STEVE MCQUEEN You work your side of the street, and I'll work mine. CHAD MCQUEEN He lived life to the fullest, man. ROBERT DOWNEY JR Steve McQueen was the coolest of the cool, with searing performances in blockbusters like The Magnificent Seven and Bullitt, and his love for fast cars, beautiful women, and life on the edge. He was one of the hottest cultural icons of the 20th century. CHAD MCQUEEN My dad has gotten the nickname since he's passed "The King of Cool,” but you know, even when he was alive, he always had that. Everybody would say, "Your dad's so fuckin' cool. He's cool," you know? He was cool. GARY OLDMAN There's Steve McQueen, and then there's cool. He pre-dated cool. BEN MANKIEWICZ Steve McQueen is somebody too cool to be bothered with the things that bother the rest of us 24 hours a day. ACTRESS Ow! You bastard. BEN MANKIEWICZ It's one thing to have that confidence, though. It doesn't hurt to look like Steve McQueen. It doesn't hurt to have those eyes. MARISA MILLER Those eyes were just... They were just piercing. When he's in a scene, even if he's not talking, there was so much being said. MAGNUS WALKER Everything that Steve McQueen did, he looked cool doing it. Driving that dune buggy in The Thomas Crown Affair, or, of course, you know, the Mustang chase scene in Bullitt. My favorite images of Steve McQueen are of him holding a beer next to his pick-up truck with the beard and the cowboy hat. Whatever look Steve McQueen had, it looked cool. MOLLY MCQUEEN It's that something, you know? He was a man unlike any other, and he owned it. RANDY COUTURE He's the guy's guy. He embodied all the things that every-- man, I want to be able to jump a motorcycle and race cars and get the girl, and, you know... PIERCE BROSNAN He loved women. He loved the danger of life. He lived on the edge. He came out of a rough-hewn kind of existence. MARISA MILLER I like a guy to have, you know, maybe a little dirt under his fingernails, but to be able to put a suit on and have that sophistication, it just added a whole 'nother level. GARY OLDMAN Great looks, charisma, masculinity, vulnerability, menace... He had the fuckin' lot, you know? All his numbers came in. ROBERT DOWNEY JR In Hollywood, there are actors who play the part... and actors that live it. This is the story of one man who pushed the boundaries, broke the rules, and drove through life on his own terms, but for McQueen, the road to success was not an easy one. MARSHALL TERRILL Steve McQueen really had all the odds stacked against him. He had two alcoholic parents. He was born six months after the Great Depression. He was on the fast track to jail, and he lived pretty much a homeless existence. CHAD MCQUEEN He had a very crappy existence as a kid, you know? STEVEN R MCQUEEN You know, Steve came up from nothing. He was in a boys' home, the Boys Republic. CHAD MCQUEEN From the way I hear it, it was because he was doing delinquent shit, you know? He was stealing and, you know, and I don't think he was stealing just to be one of the guys. I think, if anything, it was to feed himself. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN He escaped from the Boys Republic, and they caught him, and, of course, they punished him, and he escaped another time, and then they brought him back and said, "Okay, if you don't settle down,” he said, "we're going to have to really be severe with you.” CHAD MCQUEEN If you screw up after Boys Republic, you go to prison. You go to jail. You go to the big house. ROBERT DOWNEY JR As Steve learned to curb his wild side, his estranged mother, Julia, invited him to live with her in New York City. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN She sent him a little money, $5, and so with $5 on him, the Boys Republic gave him a pair of jeans and a shirt. It's hard for me to go through that. I don't know why, but every time I think of it, I really see this kid at 16, traveling across country with only $5 in his... With only $5 on him, going to New York to meet up with his mother, you know, and then when he got off the bus, he smelled liquor on her breath, and she had started to drink at that point in time, you know? CHAD MCQUEEN My dad's mother, Julia, my dad really never... never brought her up that I can remember. I know there was a tremendous amount of anger, as expected, but then my mom tells me the day she died, he broke down, so you try and figure that one out, you know? It's a heavy dynamic. INTERVIEWER You did come from a broken family and you went through, probably, what, 50 odd jobs? STEVE MCQUEEN I went through an awful lot, dishwashing, truck driving, post office, everything. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN At 17, he joined the Marine Corps. He was assigned to the motor pool, and then he became a tank driver. He was one happy boy over there because suddenly, all this machinery was right in front of him, and he was fascinated by it all. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN The Boys Republic and the Marine Corps really were his true homes. He found an anchor in his life, you know, for the first time. When he was discharged at 20, he was looking around to see what to do. CHAD MCQUEEN With the GI bill, he decided to take up acting, like a lot of people did, because of the girls. It's God's way, man. Look, he ended up being one of the best actors ever. ROBERT DOWNEY JR It may well have been the girls, but in the '50s, if you wanted to act, you chased the dream to New York City, like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and thousands of actors that never had a chance. STEVE MCQUEEN I know that when I was studying in New York, I knew that I couldn't afford to fail, because it was the only thing that I knew how to do, and I didn't know any other trade, but then I really... I do enjoy acting. It's a great craft, you know? I mean, it's a marvelous kind of feeling, you know? JOHN GILMORE Steve, at that time, was... Oh, he was real skinny and he wore some kind of an old black raincoat all the time, and he spent all of his time hustling people and trying to get work, and he would do anything, he said, anything for a part. INTERVIEWER When you were accepted in this famed school, it was quite a turning point of your career and certainly a thrill for you, wasn't it? STEVE MCQUEEN Oh, boy, yeah. I was living on a coldwater flat under the 3rd Avenue El, and, you know, working all night and going to school all day, and at the time, I guess it doesn't seem much now, but at the time, they were accepting something like four out of 2,000 people a year, you know, to be accepted in the studio, and it was free, and you could go three days a week. PIERCE BROSNAN I went to a drama school in London. It is a great education to have for any actor, but at the end of the day, you can have all the instincts and all the intellect and be able to talk till the cows come home about it, but if you can't do it, then, you know, you're dead in the water, and acting is about doing. STEVE MCQUEEN I'm an intuitive actor. I mean, I don't... I couldn't sit and talk about acting and say, "This is what I do," because I don't really know. INTERVIEWER And yet you studied it for years in some of the finest academies. STEVE MCQUEEN Yeah, but it's a study-- INTERVIEWER And intuit yourself? STEVE MCQUEEN Yeah, I did. It's self-therapy. I mean, that's what it is. JOHN GILMORE Steve was fiercely competitive. I mean, really, fiercely competitive. If you were blond and blue-eyed and good-looking-- STEVE MCQUEEN What's it going to be? JOHN GILMORE --you were just like a rattlesnake to Steve. STEVE MCQUEEN Because I'll kill you right now. JOHN GILMORE And he knew he just had to somehow get past you to achieve his goal. STEVE MCQUEEN I got my chance simply because I could run harder than some other guy, but if I want a chance now, I've got to grab it. JOHN GILMORE He believed, in some weird way, that I would be in the way from him getting, achieving what he really wanted to achieve, which was desperate. He actually would say things like, "I'll just run over the son of a bitch," you know? "If he gets in my way, I'll just drive over him.” STEVE MCQUEEN I didn't come here to be a petty thief. JOHN GILMORE I mean, that's what New York was like. It was desperate. It was a desperate time. ROBERT DOWNEY JR Despite some modest success, McQueen was getting nowhere fast until he met a rising Broadway star everyone was talking about. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN I was a Broadway baby. My life was all about dancing. I'd just come out of Carnegie Hall. I had been rehearsing for a show called Pajama Game. There he was, with a dog, a big dog. He had a German shepherd with him, and he said, "Hi. You're pretty,” and I said... I didn't know what to say. I just saw those blue eyes, you know, and I said, "Well...you're pretty too.” STEVE MCQUEEN I don't know. I suppose that opposites attract, but I guess if there was ever a thing of falling in love with a girl at first sight, I guess that was it, because, boy, I sure had to chase her for a long time. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN He picked me up on his motorcycle one night, and that was it. Four months later, we were married. And everybody kept saying, "You shouldn't marry him.” STEVE MCQUEEN At the time, I didn't have too much collateral going for myself, and I think her mother was, and rightfully so, I think she was a bit... she thought I was a little crazy, you know? NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN He was a starving actor, and I was really working hard, you know? I was never unemployed at that time. He just kept trying... He just felt that he would make it eventually, you know? BEN MANKIEWICZ He showed hunger, determination, and, as a result, he was signed by Neile's manager. Neile would always say, "Well, this is what I see in you. If you give a little of that in your performance, then you will be recognized," and that's where you really see the first of the McQueen persona starting to emerge. GARY OLDMAN There's that thing that he has, which is the passion. You've got to have that to just keep going, because you're just going to get, you know, knocked down, and, I mean, the sea you swim in is rejection. ROBERT DOWNEY JR At 27, McQueen landed his first leading role by convincing the producers he could play a teenager. STEVE MCQUEEN Dr. Hallen is dead, and he was killed by some sort of a monster. BEN MANKIEWICZ If you love movies, you can't hate The Blob. You can pick it apart and find a thousand things wrong with it, but if you love classic movies, you can't hate it. You get a lot of McQueen of the McQueen that we would then later identify with so easily. First of all, he's a little bit of an outsider, and he's definitely cooler than the other kids, and he doesn't back down from it all. STEVE MCQUEEN I saw this thing kill Dr. Hallen tonight. BEN MANKIEWICZ And we get McQueen the driver in that movie, too, and the confident recklessness that would be associated with him for so many years. ROBERT DOWNEY JR $3,000 was McQueen's payday for what was imagined to be just another low-budget horror film. BEN MANKIEWICZ Now, of course, The Blob, with its sequels and its cult status, became a rather significant film historically, but, of course, one of the reasons why it's a significant film historically is because it stars Steven McQueen. Without McQueen, I'm not sure The Blob takes on that stature, and it's great to see that it stars "Steven" McQueen, right, which seems like a totally different guy. The King of Cool can't be named Steven, first of all. The King of Cool was named Steve. CHAD MCQUEEN My dad would joke about it. He'd say, "That's my best stuff.” I think at one point he actually tried to buy the print back, you know. MARSHALL TERRILL There was a silver lining in The Blob for McQueen, in that producer Dick Powell actually requested a screener of the film, and, you know, he was impressed with McQueen's performance, and that led to Wanted: Dead or Alive. ACTOR Bounty hunter, ain't you? STEVE MCQUEEN That's right. ROBERT DOWNEY JR A rugged bounty hunter who played by his own rules was pure McQueen, and with this big break, he was determined to make his mark. MARSHALL TERRILL He wanted to make this character his own. The Western hero would get in a punch-out with four or five guys, and he would win the fight, and McQueen would look at the script and go, "No, no, no. That's not real. What you do is you sneak up on each guy, one person at a time, and you beat the crap out of them." He brought a lot of real-life experiences to this character. ACTOR #2 Do you hear me? STEVE MCQUEEN Hold it. Don't try it. You're not that fast. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN After years of struggling, Steve suddenly became a big hit and became a household name in Wanted: Dead or Alive. BEN MANKIEWICZ We've always loved Western heroes. The shows that worked, that had a star, a guy like McQueen, obviously, he popped. Hollywood producers who were willing to watch television, of which there, I don't know how many there were, since they were deathly afraid of it in those days, if they went home at night and watched Wanted: Dead or Alive, they obviously saw a guy who could succeed as a movie star, as long as they were willing to get past the notion that no TV star could ever be a movie star. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN You know, he always knew that he would make it. It was Steve's destiny to make it big, because he was such an original. BEN MANKIEWICZ Then McQueen, he makes The Magnificent Seven with John Sturges, and it's got Yul Brynner in it, and he's an Oscar winner, and he's obviously the star, and within a couple of scenes, you see scenes being stolen from Brynner, who's terrific in the film, but McQueen, mostly by not saying anything, is sort of stealing Brynner's thunder. MARSHALL TERRILL The shaking of the shotgun shells, you'll see him fiddling with a hat, you know, anything to usurp or take away attention from Yul Brynner. STEVE MCQUEEN Litterbug. GARY OLDMAN You have two people on a screen, and you want to watch this person more than you want to watch that person. You just want to look at Steve McQueen. He walks onto the screen, and he kidnaps you. STEVEN R MCQUEEN Steve McQueen's characters all had a very defining quality. He was the guy that was tough but without putting it in your face. He was the guy that you don't want to mess with, but you look up to him, and as an actor, yeah, those are the parts you want to play, and those are, that's who you want to be. You watch a movie, and there's always that character that you want to be, and he found a way to always be that guy. ROBERT VAUGHN Brynner was very much the king. He was living in a lovely home, and we were all living in a motel that we all stayed in. We all had connecting doors. There was a knock on my door. It's Steve. "Hey, hey, hey, listen to me." He said, "Did you see that gun Brynner's got? That silver gun?" He said, "It catches the sunlight. Everybody would be looking at Brynner. Nobody would be looking at me." Well, he didn't like that at all. He was very competitive. He was watching Yul Brynner like he was lining up somebody to shoot. MARSHALL TERRILL McQueen's street smarts really came into play with this movie. STEVEN R MCQUEEN He was one of the first people, if not the first, to make that transition from TV to being a movie star. BEN MANKIEWICZ And all of a sudden, then a guy who many had predicted stardom for achieved it. ROBERT DOWNEY JR With McQueen's new status at the box office, he realized that to stay on top, it would mean his films had to be on his terms. MARSHALL TERRILL Steve was looking at The Great Escape as he was the star of that movie, but he felt that what was written on the page wasn't necessarily going to take him there. He didn't just want to be part of this ensemble. He wanted that separation so that people could say, "Okay, this is the guy that we want to follow." McQueen knew he had to do whatever it took to get that part to where it needed to be. BEN MANKIEWICZ During production, McQueen quits. He walks out, and United Artists is panicking. This is a big movie, a big-deal production. They've got a big-time director in John Sturges. They've got a big cast, and their biggest star is all of a sudden not cooperating. STEVE MCQUEEN There's a great deal of compromise involved, you know, in movies, I suppose, and I get a bit undone when people try to use me or there's compromises or injustice, and I fly off the handle. RANDY COUTURE Right is right, and you know what that is, and being willing to sacrifice if it comes down to that. In his case, walking off set, it's a pretty big statement. CHAD MCQUEEN When he believed in a direction that he wanted to go, he would fight for it. I mean, he would fight to the death to get his way, and if anybody got in the way of his vision, you know, get ready. MARSHALL TERRILL McQueen said, "I want you to assign a writer to me so that I can put my signatures on the film. BEN MANKIEWICZ McQueen gets the rewrites. His character gets enhanced significantly, and, oddly, the writer who comes in, Ivan Moffat, who'd been Oscar nominated, he is responsible for so many of the things in the movie which we now associate with McQueen, which really are the things in the movie that we associate with the movie, in the cooler, with the baseball glove and the great sound. Da-dum. BEN MANKIEWICZ I mean, when I sit at home and I bounce a tennis ball off the wall without a baseball glove and catch it, you think about that, of cour-- you don't just think about it. I'm imitating him. MARISA MILLER For him to stay true to himself, no matter what that meant, whether he had to walk off set or ask something to be rewritten or change his dialogue, that takes a lot of balls. ACTOR #3 Hills, isn't it? STEVE MCQUEEN Captain Hills. STEVE MCQUEEN John Sturges has written in the script that when I make my escape, I steal a German motorcycle, and then we start our escape over the Alps into Switzerland. CHAD MCQUEEN My dad would ride motorcycles when he-- even when he was working, you know, he'd sneak off and go to the track. He incorporated his love for cars and motorcycles in his films. INTERVIEWER To go in when you're... when a machine can fall apart, aren't you scared? STEVE MCQUEEN No, no. It doesn't scare me. INTERVIEWER Steve McQueen just took a jump on a dirt motorcycle, and this is what he calls "scrambling.” ZOE BELL Whether Steve McQueen was doing the actual, all of the stunts or not, the fact that he was so obviously capable, it made it really easy to interchange between an actor and a stunt guy. I can recognize when it's him on the motorbike. There's something kind of bouncy about him, like he's sort of always got his feet, using his legs as suspension. CLIFF COLEMAN He loved Bud Ekins. They were very, very close. He trusted him. Bud went with him and did the picture as a stunt double for him. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN Bud Ekins came into town because Steve had wanted him, because he wanted to do some motorcycle stuff. I watched them build this jump. Every day, he kept jumping, and the thing got bigger and wider. One day, after conferring with Steve, Sturges asked Bud, "Can you jump five feet over that fence?” and Bud said, "I think I can do it better." NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN Bud jumped something like 14 feet in I don't know how wide. Steve did it, but insurance wouldn't let him do it on film, because if something had happened, it had fallen, that film would have shut down, and it would have cost them a fortune. INTERVIEWER Wasn't it a while ago that the studios prohibited you doing any racing while you were actually in production? STEVE MCQUEEN Shh. MARSHALL TERRILL When McQueen's character on film made that jump, audiences jumped in the air and cheered for him. KRISTIN KREUK Variety, 1962. "There are some exceptional performances. The most provocative single impression is made by Steve McQueen.” BEN MANKIEWICZ After making The Great Escape, he is if not the biggest star in the world, he is in the top two or three. ROBERT DOWNEY JR Now a bona fide movie star, McQueen set his sights on Hollywood legend Edward G. Robinson. NORMAN JEWISON I went up to his house. There was a pool table, and he said, "Do you play?" I got lucky and sank a few balls. There was applause. He said, "Tell me about Edward G. Robinson," and I could tell that he was worried about Edward G. I said, "He's a good actor. I think you should be careful with Edward G.," because right away I was trying to set him up so that he was a little insecure. That scene where he just looks at him... and you feel the tension right away. STEVE MCQUEEN I can get the money. EDWARD G ROBINSON I know you can. NORMAN JEWISON Robinson, he used to say, "I'm going to gut him. I'm going to gut him.” STEVE MCQUEEN Okay, let's see it. EDWARD G ROBINSON You're good, kid, but as long as I'm around, you're second best. You might as well learn to live with it. NORMAN JEWISON There was something impish about him, so I used to have to talk to the other actors because they were always complaining. He'd be looking down or he'd be looking off, and then when it came to his line, he'd look right just off the edge of the camera, bing. He had all these little tricks, and actors used to hate that. "Why doesn't he look into my eyes? He's not giving me anything." I said, "Because he doesn't want to.” PIERCE BROSNAN He always played with such mystery. He had such a reserve to him, and he had this emotional underpinning, keeping you, the viewer, involved with what he was doing. NORMAN JEWISON As an actor, he was not that secure. He liked an older director. I said, "You're looking for a father image. I can't be your father, but I can be your older brother, the one who went to college. You can always count on me. I'll look out for you," and I think he believed that, and that's why we had a great relationship. PIERCE BROSNAN Sometimes you bump into a director that really will challenge you, or you're opposite an actor who is just so electric, so smart, they raise your game. KRISTIN KREUK The Digital Fix, 2005. "Steve McQueen is effortlessly watchable as the Kid, providing a master class in the power of natural screen presence. ROBERT VAUGHN All that stuff that was moving around inside of him all of his life came across on the screen, that madness, that... chilling quality that he had. PIERCE BROSNAN It came from his childhood. It came from the life he lived as a young man. It came from the insecurity of life, the pain of that insecurity. INTERVIEWER What do you remember most about your childhood? You didn't go very far. You didn't dig school, I know that. STEVE MCQUEEN Oh, I liked it all right, but I had to get out and earn a little bread. I had to get out and earn a living. Oh, what do I remember most about my childhood? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, if you want to know the truth. INTERVIEWER That's great. That's great. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN We went back to the Boys Republic for the first time, and he was all dressed up in his Brioni suit. I said, "Why are you getting so dressed up?” He said, "I want those boys to see me now, today, so that maybe one of them will look at me and say, "I want to be him someday.” MOLLY MCQUEEN On-set he would sometimes have these diva-ish demands, like hundreds of razor blades and hundreds of T-shirts and hundreds of blue jeans. He would donate all of that to the Boys Republic. Steve had a huge heart, and he wanted to give. PAT JOHNSON He came from dirt poor with nothing, and he rose to be the number-one star. I mean, talk about a success story. He opened up so many minds. If he could do it, anybody could do it. MOLLY MCQUEEN He was larger than life in the public eye and in our family. CHAD MCQUEEN I mean, can you imagine coming from nothing, and all of a sudden, he's living in Oakmont, the compound at Oakmont in Brentwood. No, I mean, he had a good time. He loved life, man. He enjoyed it. ROBERT DOWNEY JR Life was good, and McQueen's two children, Chad and Terry, meant everything to him. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN Terry really was the apple of his eye, you know? He saw the world through the eyes of a child, you know, and so he always related well to kids. Terry was the powder puff champion at 14, you know? They were riding bikes at Indian Dunes, and, of course, Chad, being the boy who idolized his dad, was just... did everything that Steve did. ROBERT VAUGHN They had this big party, the best in Hollywood, young people are there. I saw Steve out on the veranda, looking out toward the ocean. I said to him, "When you were back there in Greenwich Village with Neile on the back of your bike, did you ever think you'd wind up like this?" There was a long pause, and he said, "What makes you think I'm going to wind up like this?" It was a terrifying moment. I mean, he didn't even look at me. He just said it out into the air. Something was hovering over him all the time that made him aware that this was transitory, this life that he was living. NORMAN JEWISON He had all these stories about his childhood, and he was a bad kid. I mean, he was a… because he was looking for a father. That's who... I'd bring it all down to that. Steve was really looking for his father. CHAD MCQUEEN Once my dad became successful, he wanted to find his dad, and he was trying to hunt him down. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN Steve was like a detective. When he wanted to find out something, he would be tenacious over the whole thing. Eventually, we found the trail, and we met up with his girlfriend. CHAD MCQUEEN And he'd died two weeks before. He used to watch Wanted: Dead or Alive and go, "I think that could be my son.” STEVE MCQUEEN I want to talk to you, and I haven't got much time. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN Well, he'd had a heart attack, you know. It was sad. BEN MANKIEWICZ You never know with a Hollywood star whether you're seeing the real person, you know? Everyone said that John Wayne was a great hero, but the reality is that John Wayne played great heroes. With McQueen, you definitely got the idea that you were seeing an authentic person. ROBERT DOWNEY JR Filmed exclusively in Taiwan, McQueen would star in an epic wartime saga that garnered him his first and only Academy Award nomination. ACTOR #4 Welcome aboard the Sand Pebble. That's what we call it. We're sand pebbles. Juan will show you your bunk. STEVE MCQUEEN I want to look at the engine first. CHAD MCQUEEN If you look at his character, Jake, in Sand Pebbles, it was all about that engine room. STEVE MCQUEEN Hello, engine. I'm Jake Holman. CHAD MCQUEEN That's when he came alive. MOLLY MCQUEEN It was just so much Steve. It was adding those little things that just put his touch on it. STEVE MCQUEEN If you let me run that engine room the way I'm supposed to, sir, I can give you up to 12 knots-- MARSHALL TERRILL Sand Pebbles represents his military experience. His films were biographical. They all represented a certain part of his life. STEVE MCQUEEN So I guess I started swinging. So anyhow, the judge says, "You've got three choices, army, navy, reform school.” BEN MANKIEWICZ McQueen, throughout his career, had this ability, which is the mark of a really talented actor, to convey these sort of powerful emotions without saying a word. GARY OLDMAN He's instinctive. If you say to a director with balls, and you say, "I'm saying all this,” with a look, that's instinct. That's someone sort of doing their work. You can hone intuition. You can sharpen intuition, work on intuition, but you have to have the bloody thing to start with. CHAD MCQUEEN If you look at his scripts, he would cross out the dialogue. He said, "Everybody else fill in the story, and then when there's something really important to say, I'll say it." He knew what his strengths were. GARY OLDMAN The art of it is to make it look effortless. Steve McQueen made acting look as easy as breathing. KRISTIN KREUK New York Daily News, 1966. "McQueen gives the most important and best characterization of his film career.” CHAD MCQUEEN When he got the Academy Award nomination for Sand Pebbles, my dad was... I don't think really gave a shit about stuff like that. STEVE MCQUEEN I do believe one thing, though, that I believe that I want to lead the type of life that I want to lead. In other words, my private life is my own, and I will fight to have that. CHAD MCQUEEN Whatever part of the world my dad was working in, he'd make sure we went with him. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN So Sand Pebbles, we thought it was going to be a short shoot. We were there for nine months. CHAD MCQUEEN As a son, it was so cool to know that, okay, my dad's going away, but we're going with him, you know? I'm not going to be away from my dad, or my mom, or my sister, you know? MOLLY MCQUEEN He's criticized for certain things, but a father was never one of them. Like, he was… they were his kids, and there was no getting around that. CHAD MCQUEEN He dug having us around. I know a lot of that stems because he had no family at all, but that being said, being a six, seven-year-old boy and moving to Taiwan, it was pretty, pretty mind-blowing. It was quite a culture shock. MARISA MILLER The fact that Steve traveled with his family, I mean, I love that, that he was a good dad. That got me. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN I said, "Have you read that script that I put up on your desk?” He said, "Well, it's okay.” I said, "Well, it's too bad Norman doesn't want you for that.” He said, "What do you mean?” I said, "Well, Norman doesn't want you for it, for that thing." He couldn't believe what I was saying, and I said, "Well, everybody else has the script, too, you know. There's Sean Connery, Rock Hudson, Robert Wagner, Paul Newman. Everybody has the script." So he said, "Well, excuse me." So he got up and went upstairs and called Norman. NORMAN JEWISON And I said to him right away, I said, "You know, you've never played a part like this. There's no motorcycles. There's no gun play. I've never seen you wear a tie. I mean, how can you play Thomas Crown?” NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN By the time the conversation ended, he'd got the part. PIERCE BROSNAN Doing Thomas Crown Affair, it was a departure, and it was a challenge. It was about excess. It was about the theatricality and the flamboyance of excess. It was about money. It was about luxury, and it was about sex. NORMAN JEWISON He was a little worried about the casting. He wanted me to meet a couple of other women that he felt would be right for the Faye Dunaway part. I said, "Listen, I saw her. I think she could be very, very sexy. I think it's all in here. It's all in your eyes, and..." The chess scene, for instance. It's not really about chess. It's about power. It's about control. Who's got the control? She looks at the chessboard and looks at you, and you look at her looking, and all you say is-- STEVE MCQUEEN Do you play? FAYE DUNAWAY Try me. NORMAN JEWISON And that's it, and we're going to play chess for the next three or four minutes of screen time. She's going to win. When she says "Checkmate"... STEVE MCQUEEN Let's play something else. NORMAN JEWISON And that's going to be the longest kiss in screen history. He liked that. He liked the challenge of it. MARISA MILLER Who plays chess like that? The love scene he has, the longest kiss ever. It's amazing. NORMAN JEWISON I told her, I said, "You'll be making a big mistake if you make love to Steve McQueen, because a lot of women fall in love with him, and he's going to try and seduce you, and he can be very charming." So I think Faye stood her ground. It turned out to be a wonderful chemistry between the two of them, and I think part of that was because he wanted her and she wouldn't give in. GARY OLDMAN Who wears a British-cut tailored three-piece suit better than Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair? I mean, no one looks as good in those clothes. He's sophisticated and he's-- STEVE MCQUEEN Hello. GARY OLDMAN --charming, and this bit of street underneath. Any minute now, he could sort of say, "Don't fuck with me.” NORMAN JEWISON He said, "If I'm a guy with a lot of money and I can have anything, why doesn't he drive something wild on that beach? Have you ever heard of a dune buggy?” MARISA MILLER I wonder what Faye's thinking, because Steve, you know, this is what he does, so he's comfortable. She must have been terrified. NORMAN JEWISON He loved this dune buggy because this was his idea. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN One sentence, speed, machinery were his balls, truly. I mean, I can only say that. ROBERT DOWNEY JR With success and money, McQueen collected cars, and only the best. Shelby Cobra, Jaguar XK-SS, Porsches, Lotus, they all found a home in McQueen's garage. STEVEN R MCQUEEN I would talk to random people and they'd say, "You know, when I was younger, I was driving, and this car just raced past me, and I looked in the window. It was Steve McQueen.” ALI MACGRAW Money meant toys, lots of trucks, lots of motorcycles, some planes. CHAD MCQUEEN His tastes were all over the place, but if you look at what he was buying and what he kept, you know, 30 years later, I mean, they're significant pieces of machinery. MAGNUS WALKER Steve definitely seemed passionate about his cars. He had an eclectic collection, from the Mini to the XK-SS to the, obviously, the Porsches and the Ferraris, and he seemed to get the most out of whatever it was he was driving. CHAD MCQUEEN The '58 Porsche Speedster, that was his first new car he bought, and the first car in which he won his first race at SCCA, and he sold it. BRUCE MEYER I paid $1,500 for it. The gentleman that owned it said, "Oh, by the way, the original owner was Steve McQueen.” It was like, "Well, that's cool.” CHAD MCQUEEN A Porsche dealer in Hollywood said he knew this guy Bruce had had my dad's old Speedster. My dad said, "Impossible. No way.” BRUCE MEYER A few weeks later, I get a call from Steve. "I understand you have my car, but you couldn't have my car.” CHAD MCQUEEN My dad went back where he had the roll bar in place. BRUCE MEYER He pulled back the tonneau cover. It had this German weave carpet, and he literally just-- it's glued down. He just kind of peeled it back, and I'm kind of thinking, "Well, that's kind of presumptuous," and there was the mounting for the roll bar. He says, "Oh my god," and he was just all over the car, and you could tell he was going through, you know, a real connection with this car. He says, "You've got to sell me this car," and I said, "I don't want to sell the car," you know, "I enjoy the car. I've had it a long time.” CHAD MCQUEEN My dad could be persuasive, to say the least. Three months, four months later, the car's at our house. BRUCE MEYER I think if they brought it to market now, I wouldn't be able to afford it. It would be a seven-figure number. Not single million, but millions, and at the Peterson Automotive Museum, we have his XK-SS, which is an extremely rare car. A car like that today, without the McQueen provenance, would be in the neighborhood of four or five million dollars, and if that car came available today, I'm guessing it would be well over $10 million. CHAD MCQUEEN When the D-Type Jaguar became uncompetitive, they turned the last 16 into road cars. The XK-SS, he loved that thing. It was really a racecar for the street. My dad used to flog that thing. When he decided to pedal down, it was, you know, get ready for a ride, you know? MAGNUS WALKER Once you're behind the wheel, it's freedom. BEN MANKIEWICZ I'm not a doctor, but I always imagined that somebody who came from McQueen's background was always trying to get away as quickly as possible from wherever he was, from that situation, so the idea of explosive speed, I could see how that would appeal to somebody. I mean, that is armchair psychology in its basic levels, but it seems to make sense for a guy who, according to everybody who knew him from the earliest age, lived to drive fast, to go fast. BRUCE MEYER The need for speed is in your DNA. It's not like you can train somebody to go faster, brave speed. It's just part of your genetic makeup. It's a mutant gene that just is very hard to satisfy. No matter how fast you go, you need to go faster. ROBERT DOWNEY JR And McQueen would go faster. He competed at the highest level, bankrolling his own racing team, Solar Racing, entering Santa Barbara, Del Mar, and Sebring's 12-hour, around-the-clock endurance race. BRUCE MEYER Steve was a very talented driver and very gutsy and fearless, and that's a terrific combination, and every motorhead and every racer respected Steve for his genuine, bona fide driving talents. CHAD MCQUEEN It was always about testing himself. He always wanted to measure himself against the best. KRISTIN KREUK Motor Trend magazine, 2004. "Steve McQueen's legend lives large. His love of all things mechanical was legitimate and genuine.” CHAD MCQUEEN Every one of my dad's cars, they've all got their little stories. CHAD MCQUEEN The funny thing about that car, I get more thumbs-up in that one than anything. People know that car from Bullitt. MARSHALL TERRILL When anyone ever does a top-10 list of car chases onscreen, it's always Bullitt that's number one. The interesting thing is that in this script, it just says, really, two words, and that is "car chase." In McQueen's head, he knew exactly what he was going to go for. MARISA MILLER To have that kind of control, it's like a kid in a candy store, like, he gets to write his own car chase? He got to do what he loved and do it the way he wanted to do it. CHAD MCQUEEN The genius of my dad was when he knew he was going to do Bullitt, he had to figure out a great car that a detective could afford. They picked the Mustang, and then he got some of the best engineers to work on the car, get it ready for jumping. ZOE BELL The chase sequence in Bullitt, every time I watch it, there's one massive slide-out-- waah! when he gets loose. Every single time, I'm like, (deep breath). STEVE MCQUEEN We had Bill Hickman, who was probably one of the finest stunt drivers in the world today, and myself, who's probably the worst. We felt that we should start off working in close harmony at a racetrack so that Bill Hickman and myself would be used to working close to each other at high speed, so we went out to Cotati Raceway up above San Francisco and worked at high speeds at well over the ton mark. MAGNUS WALKER I was always a Mopar guy initially so, of course, you know, these two cars in that famous chase scene, there is the Mustang and there is the Mopar, and, you know, Steve drives the Mustang, the '68 Fastback. It's one of those things you can watch over and over and over again. It's just pretty amazing how that was done. STEVE MCQUEEN We were involved in approximately 22 to 30 square blocks, so we had close to 50 people stationed with walkie-talkies, and that would be able to give us clearances when to start and know that everything would be taken care of as far as people accidentally walking into the scene. CHAD MCQUEEN I've driven an original '68, and they're big, they're heavy, the big motor in the front. No brakes to speak of. I think they had two discs in the front and the rears were drum. MARSHALL TERRILL They got up to 124 miles an hour. The cameraman actually leaning out the car with his body hanging out, holding on to the camera for dear life. CHAD MCQUEEN All of that was guerrilla filmmaking, you know. They stole a lot of the shots. STEVE MCQUEEN Of course, in doing a chase as dangerous as this on the streets, is that nothing comes off, like wheels, axles. ZOE BELL The dance between the two drivers of those vehicles, that is teamwork. That's what you're witnessing there is sort of, like, two people going through choreography and tons of steel that could at any moment, be deadly, so there's, like, an immense amount of trust that needs to happen between... And not just these two lead guys. Like, all the cars that are sliding out of place or coming to a stop, they all have to trust that that guy's going to stop, and this guy has to trust that the lead car isn't going to hang out too wide. STEVE MCQUEEN So then all we had to do was get the stuntmen, which we had eight that we thought were the best, and put them in cars to act as pedestrians, so that when we were going by them at well over 100 miles an hour, we knew what they were going to do and they knew what we were going to do, and, of course, a car coming at that speed, if you lose it and spin it, the men are in great jeopardy. MAGNUS WALKER It seems real, you know, it really does seem that that was a no-holds-barred chase. It really feels like you're there with them in the driver's seat. It's just thrilling. BRUCE MEYER The fact that Steve was doing it made it maybe the coolest car chase in the history of car chases. MARIO ISCOVICH When I watch Bullitt, I believe that Steve did it all, you know, and the truth is that he did a lot of it, you know, and of course the studio freaked out. ZOE BELL There are going to be those times where the risk is that if you're doing it enough, the possibility and the chances of you getting nailed become more likely, and if he hurts himself, the whole production's screwed. Your lead guy, if he's out, the whole production has to stop. He kind of liked that rebellious "screw you, I'm doing it.” ROBERT VAUGHN He wanted to be as real as anybody could possibly be real in everything that he played. STEVE MCQUEEN The feelings, the sensitivities… this is the kind of reality that’s important in motion pictures. PIERCE BROSNAN You can only do what's in your own heart. You can only play what ingredients of your psyche and soul belong to you and have meaning to you. MOLLY MCQUEEN It's authenticity. Audiences, especially movie audiences, can smell out a fake from, like, miles away. MARSHALL TERRILL He saw the inside of how police work was really done. STEVE MCQUEEN You work your side of the street, and I'll work mine. MARSHALL TERRILL Bullitt was released in October of '68. The reaction was absolutely through the roof, and the profits were just crazy, and Steve McQueen as Bullitt just became an instant icon. This is truly where the Steve McQueen legend really takes off. KRISTIN KREUK The New York Times, 1968. "Existential cool, less taut and hardshell than Bogart, McQueen simply gets better all the time.” GARY OLDMAN I mean, no one looks better in white Levi corduroys and sneakers than Steve McQueen. No one wears sunglasses like Steve McQueen, and no one can look as wonderful behind the wheel of a fast car. ROBERT VAUGHN He had the X factor, in big letters, the X factor, sex appeal. ROBERT DOWNEY JR On and off the screen, McQueen was paired with some of the hottest actresses in Hollywood. Never one to turn down a good time, the line between the two worlds began to blur. MARSHALL TERRILL At that point in time in Hollywood, you know, we're talking the '60s and '70s, when everything was sort of a free-for-all, I don't really think that he knew how to adjust. He obviously wanted to retain his family and be the family guy, but then there were these temptations on the other hand that just made that impossible. ED SALVEN I mean, a beautiful woman wouldn't have been a real problem, you know, at all, you know, and I certainly saw women coming up to him, you know, they could basically not formulate three words together because it was Steve McQueen. ZOE BELL There's just something about him for me that starts, just, like... what was I talking about again? ED SALVEN And he'd just look at them and be very charming, which he totally could. He had that one down, which was why, you know, he was the King of Cool, you know? CHAD MCQUEEN Girls would blatantly throw themselves at my dad in front of their boyfriends or husbands, and he was always so cool about it. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN There was just free love and free everything, and sometimes he would come to me and say, "Why do I have to work for love at home when I can get it for free outside?” ALI MACGRAW Every man I met wanted to be him. Every woman wanted to sleep with him. Every kid wanted to be mentored by him. He just had that extraordinary, charismatic sort of sexual but dangerous but soft underneath, bright, street-smart power. ZOE BELL He's pretty hot. I've gone back a couple times and gone, "Okay, maybe if I didn't know him to be as cool as he was, and if you just take a random photo and you see a photo and you're like, I mean, he's got pretty eyes and this and that, and then you watch any footage where he's talking, and the dude's just hot. STEVE MCQUEEN There's no way out. You've done too good a job, Vicki. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN Steve's body was really just perfectly shaped, you know, and he kept it that way. He had a bus stop sign that he had stolen from one of the streets in New York, and he would work out with that. RANDY COUTURE Being, you know, in front of the camera, being a leading guy like he was, you've got to have that physical presence, especially when you start wearing a couple hats, producer and leading man actor, you've got to be in great shape to have the concentration to be able to do that for long periods of time. Because he was that kind of hands-on type of guy, it was natural for him to gravitate towards martial arts and towards a sport like that that's very physical. There's also a mental discipline involved. It probably tripped a lot of triggers for him. ROBERT DOWNEY JR And McQueen would train with the very best, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and Pat Johnson. PAT JOHNSON Steve was probably the most aggressive guy I've ever, ever trained. He really wanted to get the martial arts so he could learn some self-discipline. He had an ego, no denying that at all. He had a real short fuse. He could go off in an instant, but he wanted to learn to control that temper and to... as well as know how to fight, so if somebody did get in his face, he'd be able to either walk away or know that he could put the guy out right now. RANDY COUTURE You're out there all by yourself. You're going to get out of it exactly what you put into it. MARISA MILLER I can totally see why martial arts and working out every day was a really important part of his life. It's so much more than, you know, physically looking good. It's very mental. KRISTIN KREUK L.A. Times, 2010. "McQueen embodies effortless cool, dangerous masculinity, edgy charisma that are coveted by men, embraced by women.” NORMAN JEWISON Everybody knew that Steve McQueen was the coolest of them all, but I found out as I worked with him, you know, I think he was a warlock. I think he was affected by the moon. STEVE MCQUEEN I, uh...I rarghhh... I bark and growl. Every full moon, I go like an animal. NORMAN JEWISON Whenever there was a full moon, I'll never forget his publicity guy said to me, "You'd better watch him next week. Full moon, you know. He's affected by the moon." I said, "What are you talking about?" and sure enough, he disappeared on his motorbike, out on the desert. It was kind of strange. I'm thinking (inhales). I think there was a little pot going there. He totally disappeared, and nobody knew where he went. CHAD MCQUEEN And it's no secret my dad liked his grass, and it was the '60s, you know what I mean? I mean, they were trying every fuckin' thing, you know? Dennis Hopper told me a story once about him and my dad in a Jeep taking mescaline out in the middle of nowhere in the desert. Just take it right up to the edge. That was my dad. Everything was right up to the fuckin' edge, wasn't it? INTERVIEWER Do you ever relax, though? STEVE MCQUEEN Sure, sure. I'm relaxed right now. INTERVIEWER Are you? STEVE MCQUEEN Yeah. INTERVIEWER Yeah? So you do relax. You seem to relax-- just a little thing, I was watching you race, and when you're on a motorcycle, you seem to be loose, and there seems to be a little tenseness about you otherwise. STEVE MCQUEEN The only time I really, really, honestly relax-relax from the tensions, it seems as though is when I'm motor racing. I do relax a lot at speed. One really has to, you know, I mean, you must stay relaxed, because then if any trouble comes up, you don't want to be tense. You want to stay very relaxed so that you can cope with it. CLIFF COLEMAN He liked the speed and the action and the muscles and the dirt in the face and the rain and rocks hitting you and falling off and all that. It was all part of his world of masculinity. RANDY COUTURE You're dealing with a few-hundred-pound motorcycle and taking it through circumstances that not a lot of people can handle. CLIFF COLEMAN He was very strong, he was very fast, and he showed that in the way he rode a motorcycle. He was very aggressive. If you were in front of him in a race, sooner or later, he'd be on your tail, because he had to pass you. That was his personality, and that's why he was so successful is because he had to win. ROBERT DOWNEY JR And Steve was a natural, racing competitively at Sebring, Baja, Elsinore, and the International Six-Day Trials. CHAD MCQUEEN He dug hanging out with guys like that, you know? I mean, he was really... he was in his element. I think for him, doing movies was a battle, you know? He knew that he had to get his game face on. With motorcycles, he'd just blend in with the rest of the guys. MARISA MILLER He really lived life. It wasn't like he was in this Hollywood box, trying to be that actor or trying to be anything. He just was who he was. CLIFF COLEMAN Once he got a helmet on, nobody knew who he was. He was the biggest star in the country, in the world. CHAD MCQUEEN He just... he wanted to be one of the guys. He wanted to be one of the racers. He entered the Elsinore Grand Prix under "Harvey Mushman." When you saw the guy with the white helmet and the yellow jersey go by, it was Harvey Mushman. BRUCE BROWN I was a big fan of his, and when I decided to try and do On Any Sunday, I went up to his office in L.A., and he was familiar with the Endless Summer, the surf film I made. Told him what I wanted to do, and he went, "Oh, cool," you know, "What do you want me to do?" and I went, "Well, pay for it," and he started laughing. He went, "Hey, man, you know, I'm in movies. I don't finance them," and I went, "Well, you can't be in my movie then," and he laughed, and the next day he called me and said, "Okay, let's go for it." Put the money up, and he was a great, great partner. STEVE MCQUEEN This is Steve McQueen, and I'm proud to have a little ride on in the film. Whether you ride or not, I think you'll enjoy On Any Sunday. MARIO ISCOVICH He loved to go fast. He would get on his motorcycle and he would go ride across the desert at 60, 70 miles an hour with no shirt, no helmet, nothing. I would say to him, "You'd better be careful. You're going to kill yourself," and he says, "I like living on the edge.” STEVE MCQUEEN The thing is that most people have the feeling that motorcyclists are, you know, long sideburns and those great, funny motorcycles and everything, and they're all kind of, you know, looking for trouble and everything, and that really isn't the case. People who enter into competition, especially in the United States, are very good sportsmen, and all of them are very keen on the sport and interested, and they're some of the best sportsmen I've ever run into in my life. CHAD MCQUEEN And when I'm six years old, he got me my first minicycle, a little Benelli, and we used to go three days a week, you know. After school, he'd pick me up and take me and Terry out to Indian Dunes to go practice, and then during the summers, our races were Friday nights. During the winters, they were Sundays. My dad never missed one, always there. When he got into the vintage motorcycles, same thing. He hung out with the vintage crowd, you know, the old guys that would go on runs. STEVEN R MCQUEEN Triumph remade the bike from The Great Escape, and I found out that there was only a thousand of them being made. I had to get one. It was a really cool experience. Me and my dad were driving those bikes around. Of course, his is all souped up. There was just this moment of riding down by the beach, and, I don't know, it just, it kind of made me feel closer to my grandfather, and it was really cool. I wish when I was younger that was something that we could have all experienced together. BRUCE BROWN He was good, you know, in that Elsinore race, there was a thousand guys, and he finished in the top 10 in both classes. We were at my house after the race, and his foot was like a basketball, all swollen up, and he goes, "I think I broke my foot. Well, I know I broke my foot.” ROBERT DOWNEY JR Two weeks later and despite a broken foot, McQueen would race the grueling 12 hours of Sebring. MARIO ISCOVICH He said he was damned if he was not going to race the race, and they let him drive it with a cast on his foot. It's unbelievable, you know? STEVE MCQUEEN I busted it in a motorcycle race up at Lake Elsinore. It was a 100-miler. Busted it in six places and I'd already said I'd drive, so I got the cast on and we just taped it up, and I can't use a foot rest, we had to cut part of it off because I'm five and one-eighth inches across the bottom of my foot, and we put some sandpaper on the bottom, taped it on so I can keep it on the clutch pedal and adjust it. MARIO ISCOVICH He was so at ease. You see, that's the thing that people don't realize. I think he was, like, a born car racer. Some people just are completely natural. He lived it 24 hours a day. I mean, that's all he could talk about, racing, racing, racing. ROBERT DOWNEY JR McQueen was neck and neck with Mario Andretti in the Ferrari 512S. With an average speed of 113 miles an hour, McQueen and his team would challenge for the lead in their Porsche 908 Spyder throughout the 12-hour marathon. In the end, Andretti would cross the finish line a scant 23 seconds ahead of McQueen. MOLLY MCQUEEN I think if you were to ask him then if he was an actor or a racecar driver, he wouldn't have known what to say. CHAD MCQUEEN His passion definitely was motor sports. It was a fix that he had to have. STEVE MCQUEEN When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting. BEN MANKIEWICZ Nobody else would make a movie about the 24 hours of Le Mans except Steve McQueen, and because it was the thing he knew, the thing he loved, nobody, nobody else would make that movie. MARSHALL TERRILL He had been wanting to do that film for 10 years. He was finally able to bring it to life. MARIO ISCOVICH Steve was completely obsessed with making Le Mans the greatest car racing movie ever, ever filmed. He was, like, very obsessed with the action and the new way of filming the car racing, and trying to find ways to show the sport and to make the person feel like you're part of it, the audience, in a way that was never done before. They had really tricked out a car with a lot of cameras on it, and it was a camera car that actually drove in the race. CHAD MCQUEEN That 917 he drove at Le Mans, every day I would say, "Dad, you've got to give me a ride in this thing, please." You know, “yeah, yeah. I'm busy. I'm busy.” They're shooting down the Mulsanne, my dad in the other car's coming down off the kink, and they're braking to hang the right into Mulsanne corner. He opens the door and he, "Come on. Come here." “I'm going to get a ride in the 917.” So he sat me down in his lap and I remember the seatbelt sticking into my back, and I kind of went to the side, and that sound of the flat 12 and the G-forces, as a kid, pressing back into my dad. There's nothing to hold on to for me, so I put my hand on top of my dad's glove, on the wheel, on the 917. He went through the first three gears, whap, whap, and then just for a brief second, he took his hands off, so I was actually steering a 917 at 10 years old. I think that's what got me addicted to motor sports and driving myself, was that feeling that I felt of the G-force, I mean, just and the sound, and, you know, sitting so low with the fenders up high like that. It just, the whole thing was an addicting experience, to say the least. MARIO ISCOVICH Le Mans was kind of a crazy experience. It was doomed from the beginning. He wasn't focused. He'd much rather hang out with the guys than hang out with the executives, you know? BEN MANKIEWICZ John Sturges wanted to make it a love story with the race as a background, and McQueen was like, "I didn't wait to make this movie to have the race be the background. It's about the race.” MARSHALL TERRILL Sturges kept saying, "Well, where's the human story?” because it was just all about machines. So you had them bumping heads from the very beginning. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN John wanted a script, and there was no script. MAGNUS WALKER I don't think Steve McQueen says anything for the first 35 minutes of that film, but you're just sort of drawn to it. It's almost like you could smell it, you know. That's how visceral and visual it is. CHAD MCQUEEN He was in the car five days a week, and, you know, going racing speeds, and he said, "Every day I thought I was going to get killed.” MARSHALL TERRILL It was a very, very dangerous film set. There was rain. There were crashes. There was a driver that lost his leg. MARIO ISCOVICH And I think, in a way, it's like the painter's madness. I think that he went mad a little bit in the making of the film. The obsession took over and he lost control. I mean, he just went, he went nuts. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN Le Mans was a disaster film for everyone involved. It was a disaster for me. It was disastrous for Steve. It was disastrous for his relationship with John Sturges. MARIO ISCOVICH He wasn't showing up for the filming. The director got fed up, John Sturges. They finally had a big blowout, and John left, and they replaced the director, and from then, it just became something different. BEN MANKIEWICZ In asserting himself and essentially parting company with John Sturges, who he'd been so successful with, and getting the television director to come in and really having McQueen direct this movie, perhaps he wasn't threatened. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN He wanted to be a filmmaker, and he was being adored by everybody. Everything was "Yes, Steve," and "Yes" that. MARIO ISCOVICH And Steve was difficult at that time. I'm sure the director did the best he could. I don't think Steve was that cooperative. One thing led to another, and just things began to disintegrate. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN I mean, the whole thing, they took the money away from Steve. They took the production, everything. They took everything away from Steve, and everybody at that point in time seemed to be doing drugs. That was the start of the tearing of the family, because it was just getting too heavy. MARIO ISCOVICH I think the issue was Steve at the time. He was distracted by cars, car racing, motorcycle racing, women. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN There were times that I didn't look away, and there was a time when I retaliated, and when I did, the marriage never recovered from that. He had a terrible temper, you know, and it just... he, uh... He terrified me, so I just said, "I have to leave.” MARSHALL TERRILL With Le Mans, McQueen was all in. He gambled everything on Le Mans, and he lost. KRISTIN KREUK Los Angeles Times, 1971. "Le Mans loses revs the minute it gets off the track. It is more than a little schizophrenic.” MARSHALL TERRILL At the age of 40, Steve McQueen now found himself divorced, broke, and doesn't really know what's going to happen with his movie career, because he's suffered this huge flop. Luckily enough, he came across a script called The Getaway, by Jim Thompson. STEVE MCQUEEN Straight ahead. BEN MANKIEWICZ The Getaway, obviously a life-changing experience for Steve McQueen. He meets his co-star, Ali MacGraw. ALI MACGRAW Hi, Doc. KATY HABER McQueen produced The Getaway. The casting process was very simple. Steve said, "I want the girl from Love Story.” ALI MACGRAW I was married to Robert Evans, who was then the head of Paramount. BEN MANKIEWICZ She's married to Robert Evans, perhaps the most powerful man in Hollywood, but yet this is still Steve McQueen. ALI MACGRAW Steve called and said, "I want to talk to you about doing this film and maybe using your wife." I had to be talked into doing it. I thought I was wrong for the part, and they all said, "Wow, I mean, you get to work with Steve McQueen. This is an absolutely brilliant career move," and, of course, I knew he was one of the biggest stars in the world, but that in itself was kind of intimidating, because I was such a neophyte. I had no clue how to play in that league. The first day with Steve on The Getaway, he and Sam Peckinpah picked me up at the airport and did, like 360s down the freeway. That was kind of a "Wow, we're all going to have a very different kind of life than you're used to, you repressed New England non-actress. Have a look at this.” BEN MANKIEWICZ As soon as they meet, there's this instant electricity. ALI MACGRAW I do literally remember watching him walk out of the house to the edge of the pool, which was the color of his eyes, which I could see from 700 feet. I mean, it was an overwhelming, visceral, turn-on, who-is-that kind of feeling. You know, that's a stunner. It doesn't happen a lot. The attraction was electrifying. It was scary. KATY HABER It was a foregone conclusion that something was going to happen. BEN MANKIEWICZ And of course, eventually she leaves Robert Evans, the head of production at Paramount, for Steve McQueen while they're making The Getaway. Steve McQueen had that sort of power. KATY HABER Steve fell in love with the girl from Love Story, and Ali fell in love with one of the most, you know, charismatic actors of the century, you know. It was a no-brainer, really. KRISTIN KREUK Los Angeles Times, 1972. "Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw generate between them as much electricity as any of the fabled screen teams of the past.” ALI MACGRAW It was like being a student on an advanced film set. Sam Peckinpah once said, "If you want to learn everything there is to know about acting for film, watch his eyes," and that's powerfully true. Nobody that I've ever watched has come close to doing what he did. There are many great things to do. He nailed his version for all time. ROBERT DOWNEY JR In one of the most challenging roles of his career, McQueen would put it all on the line in a role based on a true character who had risked everything to be free. STEVEN R MCQUEEN In Papillon, there was just this broken man, and that was amazing to see. All his other movies, he was very strong. There was always this steel wall that no one was going to get through, and that was the movie that you just saw that kind of crumble. ALI MACGRAW Franklin Schaffner did a brilliant movie, and they killed themselves for him. They were up to your waist in hot, bug-infected Jamaican mud and blistering heat. GARY OLDMAN It's physical. It's mental, emotional, and physical. You were just in that awful situation with them. RANDY COUTURE It's a grind, 12-, 14-hour-plus days on a lot of days. There's a physicality to that. There's a mental discipline that it takes to stay focused and on task. DUSTIN HOFFMAN You'll be killed, you know that. STEVE MCQUEEN Maybe. RANDY COUTURE He insisted that he was doing that stunt himself. He wasn't going to have some stuntman do it for him. ZOE BELL My assumption was it must have not been Steve, because we were so wide we couldn't tell if it was or not, so why not get in on his face? That seemed sort of wasteful to me in this day and age. I guess back then, maybe it was more like, "Well, he's just going to do it, so we're just going to shoot it how we'd normally shoot it." Instead of it being five cameras on it, and we want one on his face and we want to see him all in one frame, in one, you know... I want to see that. BEN MANKIEWICZ With The Getaway in '72 and then Papillon in '73, if there was a sense after Le Mans that the decade of Steve McQueen had come to an end, those two films certainly shattered it. They were box office successes. They were largely critical successes, and Steve McQueen was back on top. ALI MACGRAW After Papillon, Steve was exhausted. We lived at the beach, and he said, "I want a break." On a good day, and there were many, many, many good days, we were the most sort of ordinary, all-American happy family. Chad lived with us, which was great, because he looked so up to his father, and I found Steve a terrific father, you know, really caring. CHAD MCQUEEN At the end of the summer, it's time to go back to school. It was like, "Fuuuccck," you know. My dad came in one night and says, "Hey, listen. You can live with me if you want, you know, or your mom, whatever." I thought about it. I think, God, it took me about a half a second, and I said, "I'm going where the action is, Dad. I'm going with you.” STEVE MCQUEEN Architects. PAUL NEWMAN Yeah, it's all our fault. STEVE MCQUEEN Now, you know there's no sure way for us to fight a fire at anything over the seventh floor, but you guys just keep building them as high as you can. PAUL NEWMAN Are you here to take me on, or the fire? BEN MANKIEWICZ McQueen had had this rivalry with Newman that dated back to McQueen's really small role in Somebody Up There Likes Me, which was one of Newman's first great onscreen successes. ALI MACGRAW It was so unnecessary. They're both brilliant and beautiful, and, I mean, ridiculous. I never knew Paul enough to know whether he had anything, but I know Steve had a little thing about him. BEN MANKIEWICZ In the late '60s, in George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, McQueen passes up an opportunity to star with Paul Newman. Again, it's this sort of, this huge chip on his shoulder that drives him. It was resentment, though, that Newman really didn't know about or participate in, and then it comes back to strike again during Towering Inferno. He wanted to have exactly the same number of lines. It is ironic to have Steve McQueen at any point in his career fighting for dialogue. STEVE MCQUEEN We’ll plug it and splice it into the timer, set it [clucks], and it blows. ALI MACGRAW; It was not a computer-generated thing, it was… It was a very, very insane set. I mean, they were setting fire to walls and flooding the rooms, and I think it was fun for him. KRISTIN KREUK Roger Ebert, 1974. "A masterpiece of stunt coordination and special effects. The Towering Inferno is a brawny blockbuster of a movie.” BEN MANKIEWICZ McQueen gets a big salary up front, but he also gets points on the back end, a significant number of points, and he ends up making $14 million. MARSHALL TERRILL In today's dollars, we're talking, like, $60 to $80 million. ALI MACGRAW He was a superb film actor, without any doubt, but like a handful of people, he had this kind of... bits of danger, like what are you really going to do? Underneath that, there was tremendous insecurity and softness and sensitivity, but the survival mechanism was that, like, combustible, dangerous, mysterious now-you-see-it, now-you-don't. When it was good, it was very, very, very good, and when it was bad, it was horrendous. There was no kind of gray, boring ground. CHAD MCQUEEN It's all-in love or all out of love, you know what I mean? It's 100% one way or the other, and it's just the way he was. ALI MACGRAW In the heat of skyrockets in the night passionate love, you just go, "Wow, it's always going to be like this," but it isn't. He was the biggest movie star in the world, but I was having my five minutes of being pretty conspicuous. You're running in the fast lane, and people are clapping every time you turn the corner. We were both having such a difficult time communicating, it was one of those, like, explosions. CHAD MCQUEEN I'd wake up in the morning and go down to the kitchen and there'd be a fucking plate sailing past my head. They're throwing plates, you know, so… ALI MACGRAW The kids don't know who's going where. They're scared when they hear arguments. They're relieved when they hear that you're happy together. They wonder why they can't go to Father's Day weekend because he's in some other country, or where's your mother? I mean, it's a rotten family scenario. The fact that our marriage wasn't working was very disturbing to him. He was not happy, and I was unhappy, and we weren't doing anything about it. He sort of checked out. CHAD MCQUEEN Yeah, you know, eventually, they didn't see eye to eye, you know, but the time she was there, it was pretty fun. It was good. ROBERT DOWNEY JR McQueen not only left Ali, he left Hollywood, the star machine, the highs, the lows, the whole crazy thing. CHAD MCQUEEN He didn't want anything to do with the movie world, you know? He wouldn't even let a script come to the house. I'd have to go pick it up at the gas station. MARSHALL TERRILL McQueen walks away from Hollywood, but Hollywood doesn't necessarily want him to walk away. Every great role of the '70s that you can think of was offered to McQueen first. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, First Blood, The Gauntlet, Apocalypse Now, all these great, classic films that sort of fit the McQueen type, and he turned it all down. ROBERT DOWNEY JR At 47, McQueen decided to start a whole new life. At age 23, Barbara Minty was the perfect partner. CHAD MCQUEEN And she was a cover girl, you know? She was very young, very exotic, and my dad saw her. BARBARA MINTY It was an ad for Club Med. It was my butt. I was turned around. I was clicking my heels up, and I guess maybe he liked the spirit? CHAD MCQUEEN My dad, when he sees somebody on the cover of a magazine, "Hello?” BARBARA MINTY When I first laid eyes on him in the Beverly Wilshire, he was a scruffy, scary... Looked like a homeless old hobo. He asked really serious questions. I mean, he was going to my soul, to my heart, and I think he was that kind of a guy that he wanted to know if I was real and if I was going to, you know, mess with him or do anything. CHAD MCQUEEN And she liked Coors Lite and Old Milwaukee like we did, so she fit right in. BARBARA MINTY We definitely matched. The ages were a little different, but it worked, you know? We just loved the same things. CHAD MCQUEEN It was all trucks, you know? We all drove trucks from the '40s. BARBARA MINTY We just had so much fun together. I mean, it was just easy. I liked cars and motorcycles and, you know, good pick-up trucks. CLIFF COLEMAN I toured the western states with him looking for a ranch for him to buy, because he wanted to get out of L.A. BARBARA MINTY He just said, "Honey, come on. We're going to go to Santa Paula airport. I found something. Here's the hangar." The next day, you have a plane, and the next day you have 30 motorcycles with the plane, and then it's, "Honey, I bought a house." It was a great little house. I mean, it was so perfect for us. It was old, everything. We had the old pull-chain toilets. I think he was happy. I mean, it was a whole new Steve. And had a couple years here, and then we had a year in the hangar, and this was his little privacy. It was his playland. PETE MASON He was walking around the airport and he happened upon a guy, a World War II veteran, Perry Schreffler. Steve asked Perry what would be the best way to learn how to fly, and Perry said, "Well, that's the way I learned how to fly, with a military instructor in a Stearman. CLIFF COLEMAN I don't think he even thought about it. He just went home and bought two Stearman, and he learned how to fly. BARBARA MINTY He was sitting on the john reading Trade-A-Plane, and he called a guy from the potty and bought it. PETE MASON Steve's first Stearman he only owned for a day or two because my dad made one comment that he didn't think it was a good Stearman, so instantly Steve got rid of that and bought that Stearman. BARBARA MINTY He could drive cars and he could ride motorcycles, but he was a shitty pilot. There's Steve McQueen the actor and Steve McQueen the man, so I was lucky enough to know the man. We had quiet times. I got a quieter, more mature McQueen. We used to get in the old pick-up truck, and we'd just go driving. He'd say, "Well, it's going to be for a week or two, so pack a little more," and we'd just go for a while. It was fun. It was...insane, actually. ALI MACGRAW The life that he chose to live with the particular movies he chose to do after he and I were divorced, I think was the life he wanted to live. PIERCE BROSNAN Steve McQueen really used himself 100%, and he didn't really go outside of that box. He played to his own strengths and his own passions and his own imagination, and found pieces that fit him like a glove. ROBERT DOWNEY JR Living his new life, McQueen would climb back in the saddle to play rogue lawman Tom Horn. CHAD MCQUEEN People don't realize this, but he was a filmmaker. I mean, Tom Horn he pretty much directed himself. CLIFF COLEMAN He asked me to be the assistant director and take care of him while he was making this picture. About a week into the picture, he looks over at me and I said, "What's wrong?" He says, "I can't do it anymore. My director is driving me crazy.” BARBARA MINTY He knew what he wanted. It was his film. He wanted it filmed a certain way. He wanted everybody to do it his way. CLIFF COLEMAN We drove into the compound where the dressing rooms were and et cetera, and he got out of the truck, walked into the director's motor home, and fired him. BARBARA MINTY He was difficult, I'd say. I wouldn't want to work for him. CHAD MCQUEEN Like my dad was with everything else, you know, 100%. He lived out on the set with Barbara in the motor home. BARBARA MINTY We had a house in Tucson, a penthouse at, like, the Hilton. We had all these beautiful places to stay, but we stayed in the RV and absolutely had the best time ever. CLIFF COLEMAN All of a sudden, this limousine pulled up and a guy in a suit got out, walked over to talk to Steve for a couple minutes, and got back in the car again and drove off, and I said, "What's going on?" He held up a check, and that check was for a lot of money. I mean, a lot of money, and he just folded it up, turned around, and walked back into the trailer. He was a very big man at that time, and he knew it. CLIFF COLEMAN He always was concerned about his lungs, and he would say, "What would happen if your lungs were bad or you couldn't breathe?” STEVE MCQUEEN Keep your nerve, Sam, ‘cause I'm going to keep mine. CLIFF COLEMAN It was there in some little way, you could see that he'd be protective about this or that, and you just left it alone immediately. You didn't get involved. CHAD MCQUEEN I was working as a production assistant. We knew he was sick, but I never thought, like everything else, anything was going to happen to him. He's bulletproof. BARBARA MINTY We thought it was desert fever, something like that, and when they went and did a chest x-ray, the doctor in Santa Paula said, "Go to the big hospital in Los Angeles," and that's where they found out, and that's where the doctors said... CHAD MCQUEEN He went in for that exploratory surgery at Cedars-Sinai, you know, and I remember getting there that day, and they said, "Hey, we got the tests back," and my dad was like, "Shit.” ALI MACGRAW A friend called and said, "You need to know that--", God, this is a bad story. "That Steve has cancer." "How do you know that?" "Because somebody in the examination room at the hospital took that x-ray and leaked it to the trashy press.” BEN MANKIEWICZ It gave a lot of people their first glimpse into just how horrible tabloid journalism can be. ALI MACGRAW I think this is the most immoral thing that I've ever witnessed. BEN MANKIEWICZ The manner in which they got the story was just horrible and embarrassing to anybody who cares about journalism, and certainly terrible for anybody who cared about Steve McQueen. BARBARA MINTY I'm not going there, because it pisses me off to this day, because I've still got a little anger management with the doctors, but… but there is no cure. ALI MACGRAW 50 years old, it was way too early for this story to happen, and yet he'd been exposed to asbestos, which is, I gather, what was the specific root of that cancer. BARBARA MINTY He was in the Marines, and he was cleaning up the... Of course, he went and chased some girl and he got in trouble, and they made him clean out the hulls of these ships, and they had asbestos. That's where he breathed in the asbestos, and asbestos takes, mesothelioma takes probably, usually 20-some years to get into your body and get going. PAT JOHNSON It was so sad for me, because this good-looking, handsome man, just so full of energy and so full of life was suddenly, you know, really thin, emaciated. This was something internal. Something was eating him from the inside. Something has taken over his body. MARIO ISCOVICH You know, when you're riding the bike and the wind's in your hair and you're going 60 miles an hour, he's God, but then I think he felt the vulnerability, and I think that vulnerability turned to some questioning about what it's all about. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN If he had a great fear, it was of dying young. I went to see him. I went up to his room, to his bedroom, and the fan was whirring around, and there he was, you know, and I stood above him for a while, and then he opened his eye and he said, "Hi, honey." I said, "Hi." I said, "How are you feeling?" He said, "Not good," and he said, "I thought I'd never see you again," and those were the last words we said to each other. CLIFF COLEMAN He asked me about some painkillers and I suggested the one that you should be working with is morphine, because he was obviously in a lot of pain, and he asked me, he said, "What shall I do?" and I said, "Steve, you have no choice. You've got to go up to Mexico.” CHAD MCQUEEN He knew the doctors wrote him off here in the United States. That's why he went to Mexico. He wasn't about to stop fighting. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN He fought like a son of a bitch to stay alive. NORMAN JEWISON And he fought so hard, and he didn't want to go. He could not accept it, and because he liked to win, he couldn't understand. BARBARA MINTY He tried his hardest, and you know what? Cancer sucks. ALI MACGRAW It's an intensely private time, and it had passed the time when it was about who's married to him and who... There was none of that. It was just trying to think about how he and his immediate, his new wife and his family, Neile and Terry and Chad, could best be taken care of. CHAD MCQUEEN We were down in fuckin' Juarez, Mexico, and this clinic, they couldn't get our blood type down there in Mexico, so they had me eating raw steaks and they hit me twice a day for blood. They were wheeling him to surgery, and the last thing he said to me was, "You'll be all right, son," but I didn't put it together, you know? I didn't think, but I think he knew he wasn't going to make it. NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN The call came at about 3:00 in the morning, and Terry said, "Mom, Dad just died.” CHAD MCQUEEN Every life's lesson, I got from him, you know? Good, bad, or indifferent, and even though, you know, he passed so young, at 50, boy, he crammed everything in. He crammed it all in. ROBERT DOWNEY JR McQueen fought to live his life his way, squaring off against anyone who slowed him down. His roles mirrored his own life. He was the King of Cool, the lone wolf. Steve McQueen was an original. INTERVIEWER The characters that you've played on the screen who have been loners, they've been rebellious a little bit, moody, have you interjected your own personality into these characters? STEVE MCQUEEN Yeah. INTERVIEWER Yeah? STEVE MCQUEEN Yeah. INTERVIEWER You are a loner? STEVE MCQUEEN Yeah. STEVEN R MCQUEEN Normally, you hear stories about grandparents and you don't ever get to see them. You don't... Maybe pictures. I get to see my grandfather in movies. I get to be inspired by him, and that's amazing. MOLLY MCQUEEN He definitely wouldn't have been a normal grandpa, I can say that with certainty. He would have been that guy that obviously everyone wants to have around, and probably that guy still acting like he was a teenager, you know? NEILE ADAMS MCQUEEN I miss him, but I think of him every day, just a passing glance, you know, but there are times when I'll say, "Oh, you would have loved this, Steve.” ALI MACGRAW I can't believe that he died at 50. It never leaves me, ever, ever, ever. BARBARA MINTY We were meant to be together, I know that for a fact. I mean, we worked. We understood each other, and I've never had that since. He should be here. CHAD MCQUEEN We didn't toss a lot of footballs around, me and Dad, but it was, you know, way more bitchin'. PEIRCE BROSNAN A man becomes what he dreams. That's what makes us love him, that he did push the envelope, constantly, in love, in life, and right to the end, in dying. ROBERT VAUGHN But with the passing of Steve McQueen, the world has lost one of the top two or three great film actors of our age, maybe the best. I loved him a lot. NORMAN JEWISON I think of all the actors I've worked with, I was closer to him because I think I understood him, and I think he needed that. He needed someone. I miss him. ZOE BELL I would have loved to have watched the man grow old. We missed out on a bunch of really phenomenal performances from a guy who matured in front of the camera and behind the wheel and on the bike, and, you know, because there'd be a time when maybe it'd stop being about that. RANDY COUTURE He was that good at 50. Imagine what 60 and 70 might have brought us. He might have been the oldest guy to win Le Mans. Who knows? GARY OLDMAN He has the magical alchemy, and that is what makes him... a legend and an iconic figure. PEIRCE BROSNAN We haven't lost Steve McQueen because he's there, indelible, in all these movies, all these films that sit on a shelf as a beautiful tableau of a man's life. It still works today, and it still burns brightly. It still jumps off the screen at you. CHAD MCQUEEN You know, sometimes I wish I had, like, I could give you a pair of glasses and you could see what I've seen, you know? It's been a long, good ride. And let's face it, my dad was the shit. You know? STEVE MCQUEEN To all the people who see me in the movies, and to all the people who read about me, I am what I am, and if you like me, I'm glad. Steve McQueen. 47