Early Years
Terrence Stephen McQueen was born on the outskirts of Indianapolis, Indiana on March 24, 1930. McQueen’s father, William, was a flying circus stunt pilot. William would abandon his mother, Julia Ann, shortly before Terrence’s birth.
Unable to support a child, Julia gave young Terrence to her parents, Victor and Lillian Crawford. For the next eight years, the youngest McQueen lived on the family farm in Slater, Indiana with his grandparents and his uncle, Claude.
During his time on the farm, McQueen suffered permanent hearing damage, caused by an inner ear infection. He was also diagnosed with dyslexia. In 1938, when McQueen was eight, his mother sent for him to live with her and her new husband in Indianapolis. The actor would later reflect on this:
“The day I left the farm Uncle Claude gave me a personal going-away present—a gold pocket watch, with an inscription inside the case. The inscription read “To Steve – who has been a son to me”
Things weren’t easy for McQueen after the move. His mother and new stepfather were both heavy drinkers. Further, the latter would beat him on an almost nightly basis. Less than a year after moving to Indianapolis, McQueen ran away and lived on the streets of Indianapolis.
McQueen began to spiral out of control. He got mixed up with a gang and soon was beginning to commit petty crimes. His lack of attention and love at home was forcing him to seek it in other, dangerous places. In one of the actor’s final interviews in 1980, with Brugh Joy, he recalled:
“When a kid doesn’t have any love when he’s small, he begins to wonder if he’s good enough. My mother didn’t love me, and I didn’t have a father. I thought, ‘Well, I must not be very good.”
After McQueen was tracked down, his mother sent him back to the family farm. He would continue to live there for three years. Then in 1942, his mother, now in Los Angeles with a new husband, sent for the now twelve-year-old McQueen.
The future soldier’s new stepfather was just like the old one. As a result, it wasn’t long before McQueen split again, making his way back to the farm in Indiana. In 1944, McQueen left the farm in the middle of the night and joined a circus.
When the circus arrived in Los Angeles, he decided to give living with his mother and stepfather another try. This proved to be a mistake as it wasn’t long before the Los Angeles Police Department caught McQueen stealing hubcaps.
He was again turned over to his mother and stepfather. Subsequently, the boy was beaten and viciously thrown down a flight of stairs by his stepfather, as punishment. McQueen was then sent to the “Boys Republic.” A reform school in Chino, California, this school would shape the man he was to become.
While at the school, McQueen was initially a troublemaker. However, he soon cleaned up his act and became popular with the other boys. He was eventually elected to the Boys Council. After becoming a big star, the actor would send the school items in bulk, insisting that the studio pay for all of them.
In 1946, Terrence Stephen McQueen left California behind for New York City. This was in order to live with his mother in Greenwich Village. He would soon meet a couple of sailors on shore leave from the Merchant Marines.
Odd Jobs and the Military
After arriving in New York, McQueen would join the Merchant Marines and serve on a ship headed for the Dominican Republic. Upon arrival, he abandoned his duties and got a job at a brothel. For the next year, McQueen would wander around North America. Like a vagabond, he took odd jobs, including working as a lumberjack.
In 1947, McQueen enlisted in the United States Marine Corp. and was shipped off to Parris Island, South Carolina, for basic training. Initially, he had a tough time in the Marines and not surprisingly, his tenure got off to a rocky start.
The soon-to-be actor would be demoted back to the rank of private, after going AWOL in order to spend more time at a girlfriend’s house. Eventually, he got his act together and received an honorable discharge in 1950. He would later look back:
“The Marines made a man out of me. I learned how to get along with others, and I had a platform to jump off of.”
In 1952, McQueen decided to begin studying acting at the “Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre” under world-renowned actress and teacher, Uta Hagen. Her students included such big-name stars as Robert DeNiro, Faye Dunaway, Jack Lemmon, and Harvey Korman, to name a few.
In his off-time, McQueen liked racing and the idea of traveling fast. This goes back to when he was a young boy on the farm in Slater. As he learned acting, he began to pursue this other interest. He soon started to race motorcycles professionally on the weekends.
At the Long Island City Raceway, McQueen would typically earn at least $100 per week at various events. While attending these races, he became friends with another aspiring actor and racing enthusiast, Robert Culp.
Early Hollywood Years
In 1955, McQueen broke through and nabbed a role in the Broadway production of the play, A Hatful of Rain. The play was his Broadway debut and its topic was drug addiction. The play co-starred Vivian Blain, who was significantly older, yet played McQueen’s wife. Actress Kim Hunter would later take over the role of the wife.
Once McQueen’s time in A Hatful of Rain came to a close later that year, the actor headed to L.A. to pursue roles on television and in movies. His first role was in a 2-part episode of a Westinghouse Studio One production called The Defender. Hilly Elkins, a Hollywood manager, noticed him and decided to represent him.
McQueen would spend the next couple of years in supporting roles, including Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) with Paul Newman, and Never Love a Stranger (1958). He also played the lead in the science-fiction horror movie The Blob (1958), his first leading and credited role as a film actor.
On television, McQueen had a breakout part when he was cast as “Josh Randall” in a first-season episode of the western Trackdown, opposite his friend Robert Culp, who taught McQueen the art of the fast draw. McQueen would go on to reprise the role as the lead of the television series Wanted: Dead or Alive, which aired for 3 seasons, from 1958 to 1961.
The following year McQueen was selected by Frank Sinatra to replace Sammy Davis Jr. in the movie Never So Few (1959). This was after Davis, Jr. had frivolously spent money Sinatra had given him for expenses related to the birth of his child, on a lavish screening room for his house. Davis, Jr. then insulted Sinatra in a radio interview.
McQueen was paid $25,000 for the movie, which was directed by legendary filmmaker John Sturges. Sinatra and McQueen became fast friends on the set, and Sinatra offered him the role of “Tony Bergdorf” in Ocean’s 11 (1960), which McQueen declined as he didn’t want to take on smaller roles any longer.
Superstardom in the 1960s
Sturges took immediate notice of McQueen during the making of Never So Few and cast him in his next picture, The Magnificent Seven (1960). the actor, wanting to be the center of attention in every scene, would do things like check his gun, shake a shotgun round, or wipe the brim of his hat, to accomplish this. These antics infuriated co-star Yul Brynner.
The next movie McQueen was offered was the role of “Paul Varjak” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), which would eventually go to actor George Peppard when McQueen had scheduling conflicts with Wanted: Dead or Alive, which he was contractually obligated to.
McQueen made another movie with Sturges; 1963’s The Great Escape. McQueen wanted to do all of the motorcycle stunts in this movie. However, the insurance company would not allow it. His friend and constant companion Bud Ekins performed most of the stunts instead.
This was also the case five years later in Bullitt (1968), where McQueen was permitted to perform about 10% of the driving, during the famous car chase, while Ekins was responsible for the remaining 90%. Nevertheless, these 2 movies cemented McQueen’s status as a superstar.
Other notable films that McQueen would star in throughout the 1960s included The Sand Pebbles (1966), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and The Cincinnati Kid (1965), co-starring screen legend Edward G. Robinson.
McQueen was friends with Manson Family victims Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring, and learned after their murders, that he was on a list of targets of the Manson Family. For the rest of his life, the actor carried a concealed handgun whenever in public.
McQueen would wear the holster upside down, a style he emulated from San Francisco police inspector Dave Toschi, who worked on the Zodiac Killer case and was the inspiration for both Frank Bullitt and “Dirty” Harry Callahan.
In 1969, McQueen was a founding member of “First Artist Productions,” along with Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, and Barbara Streisand. This company was inspired by United Artists, which had been formed by stars Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, 50 years earlier.
McQueen’s Last Decade (1970-1980)
McQueen kicked off the decade with Le Mans (1971) and Junior Bonner (1972), both of which performed poorly at the box office. Further, he would turn down the role of “Popeye Doyle” in The French Connection (1971) because he did not want to make another cop movie with a car chase in it. Gene Hackman would win the Oscar for the performance.
Around this time, in 1956, McQueen divorced his wife, Nelie Adams, as well as getting himself arrested for a DWI charge in Anchorage, Alaska. He also would be a pallbearer at the funeral of his good friend and martial arts instructor, Bruce Lee, in 1973.
The next movie McQueen made was The Getaway (1972), re-teaming with Junior Bonner director Sam Peckinpah. He would marry his co-star Ali MacGraw shortly after filming ended. His next movie was Papillion (1973) with Dustin Hoffman. He was the highest-paid actor in the world at this point, and this film is arguably his greatest acting performance.
In 1974, McQueen teamed up with his First Artist partner, Paul Newman for the first time since 1958, in The Towering Inferno. They had wanted to co-star in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) five years earlier, but disagreements about who would get top billing prevented the collaboration.
For the next four years, McQueen didn’t appear in another movie. Instead, he concentrated on motorcycle racing.
McQueen was to star in The Gauntlet (1975) with Barbara Streisand, but they did not get along, and both of them dropped out of the movie. He also was slated to star in The Bodyguard, with Diana Ross, but the film languished in pre-production and wouldn’t be made for another 15 years, with Kevin Costner and Whitney Huston in the roles.
Steven Spielberg wrote “Roy Neary” in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) with McQueen in mind. However, the actor turned down the role because he could not cry on demand. When Spielberg offered to change the scene, McQueen told him to leave it as is because it was the best scene in the screenplay.
Finally, William Friedkin wanted him to star in Sorcerer (1977) but balked at McQueen’s demand to have his wife Ali MacGraw be a producer on the movie. The role was then offered to Roy Scheider, who accepted.
McQueen’s next film was An Enemy of the People (1978). Shot in 1976, and finished in early 1977, the movie sat unreleased for a year. This was because Warner Brothers had no idea of how to promote the film. McQueen was nearly unrecognizable with a scraggly beard and long hair. The studio released it in a few college towns, but it flopped and was not widely released.
In 1978, two major personal problems impacted McQueen’s life. The first was his divorce from Ali MacGraw. The second was a diagnosis of a type of lung cancer, called pleural mesothelioma. This was usually caused by exposure to asbestos. McQueen likely was exposed to this while removing asbestos-based insulation for a ship during his time in the Marines.
During this time, the actor turned to religion. He became an Evangelical Christian and even met with the Reverend Billy Graham. McQueen also began to date Barbara Minty, a model he noticed in a magazine ad for Club Med. The two would eventually marry.
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