Steve McQueen: A Biography

The most detailed and revealing biography to date of a Hollywood great. Steve McQueen is that rare Hollywood combination of a classic actor and a style icon in the tradition of James Dean. ‘The King of Cool’, as he was dubbed, was at one time the highest-paid film star in the world, a status earned through his roles in films like The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt, The Thomas Crown Affair and The Great Escape. But he also turned down at least as many roles in classic films, including Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The French Connection. This is the first biography to cover in detail every film that McQueen made, and to put him into the context of the movie business, showing how he had problems trying to be a Method actor where an exact contemporary like Clint Eastwood thrived at it, and how Eastwood understood the studio system and made it work for him, while an insecure McQueen struggled with his sense of himself, both on and off screen. It includes interviews with people who have never spoken about him before, and draws upon diaries in the private McQueen collection.