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He was born Terence Steven McQueen in Beech Grove,
Indiana. He never knew his father -- although
McQueen did find the house where he lived
approximately a year after his father's death.
McQueen's father abandoned his wife and child
shortly after McQueen was born. He was raised in
Slater, Missouri by his uncle, where his mother
left him. At the age of 12 McQueen moved with his
mother to Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles.
When he was 14, his mother sent him to a
reformatory school. McQueen later gave huge gifts
to the school because of his belief that it helped
him find some focus during those restless years.
Soon McQueen left the school and drifted before
joining the Marines in 1947. In 1952, he took
advantage of the G.I. Bill and auditioned to study
at Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio in New York. Of
the 2000 people who auditioned that year, only
McQueen and Martin Landau were accepted. McQueen
made his Broadway debut in 1955 in A Hatful of
Rain.

McQueen moved into film in the mid-1950s with bit
parts in Girl on the Run (1953) and  Somebody Up
There Likes Me (1956). He secured his first lead
role in the 1958 horror movie The Blob. Between
1958 and 1960 he gained recognition with the
television series Wanted: Dead or Alive. Along
with Yul Brynner, Robert Vaughn, Charles Bronson,
and James Coburn, McQueen's first major hit was
The Magnificent Seven (1960). The film, based on
Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai continues to be
shown on television and sells well on DVD. 

McQueen's breakthrough, however, came in 1963 with
The Great Escape (which also starred Bronson and
Coburn). The film was enormously popular and
inspired the television series Hogan's Heroes with
Bob Crane playing a part based on McQueen's
character. Quentin Tarantino has called the film
the shortest three hour movie he's ever seen.

McQueen's fame peaked in 1968 with Bullitt. Prior
to that, he earned his only Academy Award
nomination for the 1966 film The Sand Pebbles.
From then on he mixed character roles in works
such as 1973's Papillon (film)|Papillon, with pure
spectacle in the 1971 car race drama Le Mans
(movie)|Le Mans  or in The Getaway (1972
movie)|The Getaway in 1972. After The Towering
Inferno (movie)|The Towering Inferno in 1974,
McQueen did not return to film until 1978. McQueen
spent most of the interim drinking beer, using
drugs, and getting fat. When he returned to film
in 1978's An Enemy of the People, he was grossly
overweight, and the film was the only McQueen
vehicle not to receive a major release from the
studio. McQueen never again appeared in a
blockbuster, in contrast to the period between
1963 and 1974 when studios thought he was worth
his weight in gold.

McQueen was a motorcycle and race car enthusiast
and collected and raced hundreds of vehicles. He
liked fast machines, and when he had the
opportunity to drive these vehicles in a movie, he
often did so himself, performing many of his own
stunts. During his acting career he even seriously
considered becoming a professional race car
driver.

McQueen married Philippines-born actress Neile
Adams in 1957 and they had a son and a daughter
before divorcing in 1972. He married Ali MacGraw
in 1973 and divorced her in 1978. He was married
to Barbara Minty in January 1980 and they were
married until his death.

After 1978 he appeared only in two further films
before he died in November of 1980, only 50 years
old, in Juárez, Mexico due to a heart attack
following a last-ditch effort (using alternative
therapies he came across in Mexico) to fight
mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer caused by
asbestos exposure. It is unclear whether the
asbestos exposure came from his racing gear or
from an experience in the Marines. In any case,
even after his death, McQueen remains an American
icon.


==Trivia==

*Prefab Sprout released an album entitled "Steve
McQueen" in 1985.

*In an episode of the television show The
Simpsons, Homer states that Bart's idol is
McQueen. Marge points out that he's actually
Homer's idol.

* McQueen was honored in the 2002 Sheryl Crow song
called "Steve McQueen" off the album C'mon C'mon. 
He also appeared in a commercial for the 2005 Ford
Mustang which used scenes from Bullitt, and showed
McQueen racing the new car around a race track
built in a corn field, a la the baseball field in
Field of Dreams.

*The comedy duo of Richard 'Cheech' Marin and
Tommy Chong (AKA "Cheech & Chong') in a skit
entitled 'The Continuing Adventures of Pedro and
Man' (on the Album 'Cheech and Chong's Greatest
Hit'), 'Man' (Chong) says Pedro (Marin) drives,
"Just like Steve McQueen", meaning he is driving
well.

* Along with Martin Sheen and James Dean, he is
mentioned in the R.E.M. (band) song "Electrolite."

==Filmography==
*Girl on the Run (1953)
*Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)
*Never Love a Stranger (1958)
*The Blob (1958)
*The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959)
*Never So Few (1959)
*The Magnificent Seven (1960)
*The Honeymoon Machine (1961)
*Hell Is for Heroes (1962)
*The War Lover (1962)
*The Great Escape (1963)
*Soldier in the Rain (1963)
*Love with the Proper Stranger (1963)
*Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965)
*The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
*Nevada Smith (1966)
*The Sand Pebbles (1966)
*Think Twentieth (1967) (short subject)
*Bullitt: Steve McQueen's Commitment to Reality
(1968) (short subject)
*The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
*Bullitt (1968)
*The Reivers (1969)
*Le Mans (movie)|Le Mans (1971)
*On Any Sunday (1971) (documentary)
*Junior Bonner (1972)
*The Getaway (1972 movie)|The Getaway (1972)
*The Life and Legend of Bruce Lee (1973)
(documentary)
*Papillon (film)|Papillon (1973)
*The Towering Inferno (1974)
*Dixie Dynamite (1976) (Cameo)
*Bruce Lee, the Legend (1977) (documentary)
*An Enemy of the People (1978) (also executive
producer)
*Tom Horn (1980) (also executive producer)
*The Hunter (1980)

==External links==
*http://members.tripod.com/~stvmcqueen/ The First
Steve McQueen Site
*imdb name | id=0000537 | name=Steve McQueen
*http://www.stevemcqueen.org.uk/  The Steve
McQueen Film Poster Site
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2001/03/02/steve_macqu
een_article.shtml BBC Film Profile
*http://www.amctv.com/person/detail/0,,2120-1-EST,
00.html Steve McQueen at American Movie Classics
*http://www.geocities.com/thecooler_king/ Steve
McQueen: The Cooler King