Product Description

A full and frank portrait of the complex man behind the icon of cool. Steve McQueen, one of the first 'cool' film stars, remains a cultural icon the world over. His image is used to sell everything from cars, to beer, to a range of dolls. From the Cincinnati Kid to Frank Bullitt, Tom Crown to Papillon, his roles exemplified a certain school of male charm, as well as grit and a hint of menace. McQueen was born in 1930 into a poor Mid-western family to a highly strung mother and truant father. In and out of reform school from a young age, he was eventually made a ward of court and the resulting sense of abandonment never left him. His big break came with the TV Saga Wanted: Dead or Alive and the now cult-classic B-movie The Blob. Just two years later he was one of the leading lights of tinseltown. Sandford goes on to chart McQueen's phenomenal Hollywood career, starring in some of the world's best-loved films, in tandem with his turbulent private life: his marriages, his bisexuality, the drink, the fast cars, casual sex and violence. As a close friend has remarked: 'You couldn't peg him. He wanted to be memorable as an actor -- but in his private life you got the impression he was trying to speed up, to get into the next hour without quite living out the last one.' As Sandford reveals, McQueen's public demeanour of studied nonchalance hid chronic self-destrutive urges which emerged in his favourite hobbies, including bare-knuckle boxing and porsche-racing, as well as several suicide attempts. His 'lost' years at the very height of his fame are illuminated with disclosures of rampant addiction, bizarre health cures, fringe religion and androgyny. McQueen died in 1980 at a 'wellness' clinic in New Mexico, having been earlier diagnosed with lung cancer . His last words were 'Lo hice' -- Spanish for 'I did it'. Sandford has spoken to a wide range of McQueen's contemporaries -- Hollywood stars, friends and family -- and discovered the man behind the myth, the abandoned little boy underneath the movie-god swagger.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75995 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

The Mail on Sunday
Highly entertaining...a compelling portrait of a true original.

About the Author
Christopher Sandford has written for the Evening Standard, The Times the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and Rolling Stone. He has published eleven previous books, including biographies of Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Kurt Cobain, David Bowie and Sting. He has dual nationality, with homes in London and Seattle.

Customer Reviews

a real insight into the life of steve mcqueen
admittedly, this is my first book into the life of steve mcqueen so there's not much I can compare it with. However, I have read many other film actor biographies and this one rates very highly for me. Its a real page-turner, brings some great stories together from mcqueen's childhood through to his death in 1980 and delves into a character who essentially was very complex and hard to get to know. Read this and in my mind, you won't be disappointed.

Don't waste your time
This book, I am afraid to say is awful. There's no disputing the facts which have obviously been deeply researched, including little insights which nobody could possibly have known (see the scene where he visits his mothers corpse, and mouths 'I love you' with damp eyes. This was a private visit, so who saw that?).

The writer fails to give the book any pace or structure, jumping between times and facts almost randomly and constantly repeating the authors own opinion on what a contradictory character McQueen really was. Half way through I have had to give up on this book. The ultimate icon of american celluloid cool does not deserve so tedious a re-telling of his life.

A poor effort
Lots of words, yet very little to say about one of Hollywood's most enduring icons. The films are mentioned almost in passing, very little is said about McQueen's closest friends and family or the people he connected with during his lifetime. The author seems obsessed with McQueen's sex life whilst ignoring the star's real loves, motorcycles, cars and planes. A pity that so little attention was paid to these areas when some of McQueen's greatest achievements as a man were on the race tracks rather than on screen or in the bedroom. Must try harder!