Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [0]
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Copyright © 2011 by Rebel Road, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eliot, Marc.
Steve McQueen : a biography / by Marc Eliot.—1st ed.
Includes filmography.
1. McQueen, Steve, 1930–1980. 2. Motion picture actors and actresses—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PN22287.M547E45 2011
791.4302′8092—dc22
[B] 2011002262
eISBN: 978-0-307-45323-5
Jacket design by Laura Duffy
Jacket photographs: Front and spine: © 1978 William Claxton/mptvimages.com;
back, fourth down: Courtesy of David Foster; all others from the Rebel Road Archive
Author photograph: Courtesy of Marc Eliot
All photos are from the Rebel Road Archive unless otherwise credited.
Frontispiece: © Bettmann/CORBIS
v3.1
For bee bee and little Sweetie Pie
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
PART ONE
Beautiful Wanderer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART TWO
Big-Screen Wonder
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
PART THREE
Big Wheel
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Photo Insert
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
PART FOUR
Bedeviled Winds of Change
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
PART FIVE
Cut to Black
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Filmography
Sources and Notes
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
About the Author
All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase—I love you.
—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, “The Offshore Pirate”
Introduction
TERRENCE STEVEN MCQUEEN WAS THE PRODUCT OF A one-night stand that stretched into a year and six months of misery between Terrence William McQueen, a handsome, philandering stunt pilot for a traveling circus, and Jullian Crawford, a teenage alcoholic prostitute. Terrence William left Jullian and Steven for good six months after the boy was born. Unable to cope with single motherhood, Jullian soon abandoned Steven. As casually as she changed clothes (or took them off), Jullian passed him off to her uncle, the wealthy but emotionally distant Claude Thomson.
These early traumatic events helped shape the fragile, needy psyche that for the rest of Steve McQueen’s life would bubble just beneath the deceptively smooth surface of his very good-looking exterior. Physically beautiful but emotionally insecure, this shy and withdrawn little boy would grow up to become an international movie superstar. He would be loved by millions from afar, but unable to handle intimate commitment and often lash out at those women who tried to love him in real life.
His emotional insecurity left him extremely sensitive and wary, a combination that would aid him enormously in his early days as an actor, and lead to his powerful attraction to and essential distrust of females—a pattern that began in childhood with his mother and continued into adult life with the three women he made his wives. Marriage to Steve meant swimming in a pool of emotional turmoil. The promise of commitment tempted him, but the fear of abandonment compelled him to run away. He was a lover and a fighter whose emotions were always stoked to the peak of their heat.
Film directors favor those actors who can take their considerable inner turmoil and use it to infuse the characters they play in the movies with a heightened and compelling sense