Steve McQueen Dies: The King of Cool Gone at 50

Steve McQueen did his own driving in the Bullitt chase scene, one of the most famous sequences in Hollywood history: a 1968 Ford Mustang GT tearing through the streets of San Francisco, with McQueen at the wheel for much of it. He also raced motorcycles professionally, competed at Sebring, and attempted to enter Le Mans before the film's insurance company stopped him. Born Terence Steven McQueen in Beech Grove, Indiana on March 24, 1930, he grew up in a chaotic household. His father left before he was born. He was raised partly by an uncle in Slater, Missouri and partly by his mother in Los Angeles. He joined the Marines at seventeen, spent time in the brig for going AWOL, and later cited the discipline as the thing that saved him. He studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York under Sanford Meisner and broke through in the television series Wanted: Dead or Alive. His film career took off with The Magnificent Seven in 1960 and The Great Escape in 1963, where he performed the famous motorcycle jump attempt himself (the actual jump was done by stuntman Bud Ekins, but McQueen did the riding leading up to it). He became the highest-paid movie star in the world by the late 1960s. His appeal was minimalist: he said less than any leading man in Hollywood, and what he didn't say became the performance. The sand-cooler throwing in The Great Escape, the poker game in The Cincinnati Kid, the silent chase in Bullitt, all relied on physical presence rather than dialogue. Le Mans, his 1971 racing film, was shot during an actual 24-hour race, and McQueen insisted on racing his own Porsche 908 in the event. The film nearly bankrupted him. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 1979, a cancer caused by asbestos exposure. He had worn asbestos-lined racing suits and worked in environments with asbestos insulation throughout his career. American oncologists gave him no treatment options. He traveled to a clinic in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico for an experimental immunotherapy protocol that was not approved in the United States. He died there on November 7, 1980, at 50, following surgery to remove a massive tumor.