Saturdays with the Stars: Steve McQueen

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we talked about Charles Bronson, an actor who in the 1960's had a lot of promise as a performer who would, in the bluntest of terms, sell out for insanely high paychecks when Hollywood eventually found a niche for him in violent movies.  Bronson, in many ways, would become the template for a lot of the stars we'll profile in the back half of 2026, men who showed promise in early films but would frequently sell out their talent for bigger paychecks.  However, in May we're going to talk about a star who is so singular in Hollywood he doesn't really have a contemporary or a predecessor (though many have tried).  He therefore stands out as both an action star (he would star in some of the most successful action films of the late 1960's and early 1970's, and would rival Bronson as the highest-paid star in Hollywood), but also as an introvert's action hero, a man who would gain an Academy Award nomination during his period of great success for Best Actor, and would die far before his time, still shrouded in enigma.  This month's star is Steve McQueen.

McQueen's early childhood, like much of his life, has a sense of drama and mystery that feels clouded with a bit of tragedy.  His stunt pilot father abandoned him when he was less than a year old, and his mother eventually gave him up to live with his grandparents.  His mother would eventually remarry, bringing him back to her life (and an abusive stepfather), which led him to being sent to a reformatory school, where he matured quickly, and eventually served a brief stint in the US Marines before starting to act, first in New York and then in Hollywood, getting bit parts in TV shows and films, culminating in his first lead role in the classic horror film The Blob.  McQueen's big break happened later though, when Frank Sinatra (at the time in a feud with Sammy Davis, Jr. for comments that Davis had made about Sinatra's racist treatment of him, the rare time in their friendship where Davis stood up for himself), replaced Davis with McQueen in Never So Few, directed by John Sturges, who would put McQueen as the lead in his next picture The Magnificent Seven, a film that would cement his place as a leading man in Hollywood for the next twenty years.

McQueen is the "King of Cool" and as fascinating offscreen as he was onscreen.  He had a penchant for race-car driving, competing in a number of competitions alongside his movie career.  He was devoted to physical fitness, while obsessively using marijuana & for stints, cocaine.  When he was one of the most famous people on earth, he would be arrested for a DUI that somehow didn't remotely derail his career.  He would romance actresses as varied as Mamie van Doren, Lauren Hutton, and (most famously) Ali MacGraw, being one of the principal super-couples of the 1970's.  He was indispensably cool...but still voted for Richard Nixon in 1968 when that was a decidedly square thing to do.  And he would appear as a new type of action star-one who had some of the bravado of Connery & Bronson, but also with a sensitivity that would be more at home with Marlon Brando or Paul Newman.  And all of this he would achieve in just 50 years, for as we'll talk about this month, unlike Connery & Bronson, Steve McQueen wouldn't live long enough to have late-in-life career changes that would reshape his legacy.