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Wanted: Dead or Alive
McQueen's first breakout role would not come in film, but on TV. Elkins successfully lobbied Vince Fennelly, producer of the Western series Trackdown, to have McQueen read for the part of a bounty hunter named Josh Randall in a new pilot for a Trackdown companion series. The Josh Randall character, played by Robert Culp, was introduced in an episode of Trackdown, after which McQueen filmed the pilot episode. The pilot was approved for a new series, now titled Wanted: Dead or Alive on CBS in September 1958.

McQueen would ultimately make this role his own and become a household name as a result. Randall's holster held a sawed-off Winchester rifle nicknamed the "Mare's Leg," instead of the standard six-gun carried by the typical Western character. This added to the anti-hero image of a man infused with a mixture of mystery, alienation, and detachment that made this show stand out from the typical TV Western. Ninety four episodes, filmed at Apacheland Studio from 1958 till early 1961, kept McQueen steadily employed in television.

Never So Few At 29, McQueen got his most significant break when Frank Sinatra removed Sammy Davis, Jr. from the film Never So Few, and Davis's role went to Steve McQueen. Sinatra saw something special in McQueen and ensured that the young actor got plenty of good shots and close-ups in a role that earned McQueen favorable reviews. McQueen's character, Bill Ringa, like future characters he would come to play, brought a new kind of cool to the screen and was never more comfortable than when driving at high speed — in this case, at the wheel of a jeep. John Sturges directed this film, and then used McQueen in The Magnificent Seven a year later, and in The Great Escape in 1963.

The Magnificent Seven After Never So Few, director John Sturges cast McQueen in his next movie, promising to "give him the camera". The Magnificent Seven (1960), with Yul Brynner, Robert Vaughn, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn, became McQueen's first major hit, and led to his withdrawal from his own successful television series, Wanted, Dead or Alive.

The Great Escape McQueen's next big film, 1963's The Great Escape, told the fictionalized "true story" of a mass escape from a World War II POW camp. A spectacular motorcycle leap in the film's climax highlighted McQueen's role in the film. While McQueen was a very accomplished motorcyclist, insurance issues did not allow him to perform the actual jump. His friend and fellow cycle enthusiast Bud Ekins, who resembled McQueen from a distance, actually made the jump. More information about this jump and the movie can be found by watching the special features documentary on The Great Escape DVD. McQueen always gave Ekins credit for performing the jump. In fact, on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, when Carson attempted to congratulate McQueen for the jump, McQueen corrected him: "It wasn't me. That was Bud Ekins."

In 1966 McQueen appeared as Nevada Smith in the movie of the same name. left|thumb|Steve McQueen in [[Bullitt.]]

Bullitt and later films Another successful film was 1968's Bullitt, with an unprecedented (and endlessly imitated) auto chase through San Francisco, with Bud Ekins again doubling for some of the more hazardous work. Prior to that, McQueen earned his only Academy Award nomination for the 1966 film The Sand Pebbles. McQueen also appeared in 1973's Papillon, the 1971 car race drama Le Mans, and in The Getaway in 1972. He also played the leading role in Junior Bonner in 1972.

By the time of The Getaway, McQueen was the world's highest paid actor. After The Towering Inferno, co-starring with his long-time rival Paul Newman in 1974, McQueen did not return to film until 1978 with An Enemy of the People playing against type as a heavily-bearded, bespectacled doctor, in this adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play. The film was little seen. His last films were Tom Horn and The Hunter, both released in 1980.

Marriages
McQueen was married three times. He married Manila-born actress Neile Adams on November 2, 1956 (divorced 1972), by whom he had a daughter, Terry (born June 5, 1959; died at 38 on March 19, 1998 as a result of hemochromatosis, a condition in which the body produces too much iron destroying the liver), and a son, Chad McQueen (born December 28, 1960 and now an actor—as is his grandson, Steven R. McQueen, born 1988). McQueen has 3 other grandchildren: Chase (born in 1995) and Madison (born in 1997) to Chad; and Molly Flattery (born 1987) to Terry.

On August 31, 1973 he married his Getaway co-star, Ali MacGraw, with whom he had a passionate but tumultuous relationship (she left her husband, film producer Robert Evans, for McQueen). They were divorced in 1978. His third wife was model Barbara Minty, whom he married on January 16, 1980, less than a year before his death.

Motor racer
McQueen was an avid motorcycle and racecar enthusiast. When he had the opportunity to drive in a movie, he often did so himself, performing many of his own stunts.

Perhaps the most memorable were the classic chase in Bullitt and the motorcycle chase scene in The Great Escape. The jump over the fence was actually done by Bud Ekins for insurance purposes. (However, McQueen did have a considerable amount of screen time riding his motorcycle. According to the commentary track on The Great Escape DVD, it was difficult to find riders as skilled as McQueen and at one point in the film, due to clever editing, McQueen is seen in a German uniform chasing himself on another bike).

Together with John Sturges, McQueen planned to make Day of the Champion, a movie about Formula One racing. He was busy with the delayed The Sand Pebbles, though. They had a contract with the German Nürburgring, and after John Frankenheimer shot scenes there for Grand Prix, the reels had to be turned over to Sturges. Frankenheimer was ahead in schedule anyway, and the McQueen/Sturges project was called off.

During his acting career, McQueen considered becoming a professional race car driver. In the 1970 12 Hours of Sebring race, Peter Revson and McQueen (driving with a cast on his left foot from a motorcycle accident two weeks before) won with a Porsche 908/02 in the 3 litre class and missed winning overall by a scant 23 seconds to Mario Andretti/Ignazio Giunti/Nino Vaccarella in a 5 litre Ferrari 512S. The same Porsche 908 was entered by his production company Solar Productions as a camera car for Le Mans in the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans later that year. McQueen wanted to drive a Porsche 917 with Jackie Stewart in that race, but his film backers threatened to pull their support if he drove. Faced with the choice of driving for 24 hours in the race or driving the entire summer making the film, McQueen opted to do the latter . However, the film was a box office flop that almost ruined McQueen's career. In addition, McQueen himself admitted that he almost died while filming the movie. Nonetheless, today, Le Mans is considered to be the most historically realistic, accurate, and dramatic representation of one of the most famous periods in the history of the race, as well as being considered one of the greatest auto racing movies of all time.

McQueen also competed in off-road motorcycle racing. His first off-road motorcycle was a Triumph 500cc that he purchased from friend and stuntman Bud Ekins. McQueen raced in many of the top off-road races on the West Coast during the '60s and early 1970s, including the Baja 1000, the Mint 400 and the Elsinore Grand Prix. In 1964, he represented the United States in the International Six Days Trial, a form of off-road motorcycling Olympics. He was inducted in the Off-road Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1978. In 1971, Solar Productions funded the now-classic motorcycle documentary On Any Sunday, in which McQueen himself is featured, along with racing legends Mert Lawwill and Malcolm Smith. Also in 1971, McQueen was on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine riding a Husqvarna dirt bike.

McQueen was interested in collecting classic motorcycles. By the time of his death, his collection included over 100 motorcycles and was valued in the millions of dollars.

In a segment filmed for The Ed Sullivan Show, McQueen drove Sullivan around a desert area in a dune buggy at high speed. At the end of the trip, all the breathless Sullivan could say was, "That was a helluva ride!"

He owned several exotic sports cars, including:
 * Porsche 917, Porsche 908 and Ferrari 512 race cars from the Le Mans film.
 * 1963 Ferrari 250 Lusso Berlinetta
 * Jaguar D-Type XKSS (Right-Hand Drive)
 * Porsche 356 Speedster

To his dismay, McQueen was never able to own the legendary Ford Mustang GT that he drove in Bullitt, which featured a highly-modified drivetrain that suited McQueen's driving style. There were two cars used for filming. According to the October 2006 issue of Motor Trend Classic, in its cover story on the film, one of the cars was so badly damaged during filming it was judged to be unrepairable, and scrapped. The second car still exists, but the owner has consistently refused to sell it at any price. The owner plans a "minimal restoration" to make the car roadworthy, yet still retain the original patina.

Death
McQueen died at the age of fifty in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico from two heart attacks following surgery to remove or reduce a metastatic tumor in his stomach. He had been diagnosed with mesothelioma in December 1979, and had travelled to Mexico in July 1980 for unconventional treatment after his doctors advised him that they could do nothing more to prolong his life. McQueen was cremated, and his ashes spread in the Pacific Ocean.

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer usually caused by asbestos exposure. McQueen may have been exposed to asbestos during his service in the United States Marine Corps, or during his racing career.

Controversy arose over McQueen's Mexican trip, because McQueen sought a very non-traditional treatment that used coffee enemas and laetrile, a supposedly "natural" anti-cancer drug available in Mexico but not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Posthumously, McQueen remains one of the most popular stars, and his estate carefully manages the licensing activity to avoid the commercial oversaturation common to many deceased celebrities. McQueen's personality and trademark rights are managed by Corbis Corporation, the well-known media company owned by Bill Gates. In 1999, McQueen was posthumously inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.

Personal information
McQueen's height is disputed. He was officially listed as 5'10", but some people, including film critic Barry Norman, have said McQueen's height was in fact only 5'7". He had a daily two-hour exercise regimen, involving weightlifting and at one point running five miles, seven days a week. McQueen also learned the martial art Tang Soo Do from ninth degree black belt Pat E. Johnson (he did not train with Bruce Lee, as is often claimed). However, he was also known for his prolific drug use (William Caxton claimed he smoked marijuana almost every day; others said he used a tremendous amount of cocaine in the early 1970s). In addition, like many actors of his era, he was a heavy cigarette smoker.

McQueen served as one of the pallbearers at Bruce Lee's funeral in 1973. Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee taught McQueen's son Chad Taekwondo and Jeet Kune Do, (respectively). Later on, McQueen persuaded Norris to attend acting classes.

After Charles Manson incited the murder of five people, including McQueen's close friends Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring, at Tate's home on August 9, 1969, it was reported that McQueen was another potential target of the killers. According to his first wife, McQueen then began carrying a handgun at all times in public, including at Sebring's funeral.

McQueen had an unusual reputation for demanding free items in bulk from studios when agreeing to do a film, such as electric razors, jeans and several other products. It was later found out that McQueen requested these things because he was donating them to the Boy's Republic reformatory school for displaced youth, where he had spent time during his teen years. McQueen made occasional visits to the school to spend time with the students, often to play pool and to speak with them about his experiences.

Towards the end of his life McQueen became a Christian, due in part to the influence of his flying instructor, Sammy Mason, and his wife, Barbara Minty. He regularly attended his local church, and was visited by the famed evangelist Billy Graham shortly before he died. In an interview recorded shortly before his death, and as chronicled in Christopher Sandford's biography of the star, McQueen publicly lamented the fact that he would never have time to share his faith.

After discovering a mutual interest in racing, James Garner and McQueen became good friends. Garner lived directly down the hill from McQueen and, as McQueen recalled, "I could see that Jim was very neat around his place. Flowers trimmed, no papers in the yard ... grass always cut. So, just to piss him off, I'd start lobbing empty beer cans down the hill into his driveway. He'd have his drive all spic 'n' span when he left the house, then get home to find all these empty cans. Took him a long time to figure out it was me".

His name was not, as sometimes thought, on President Richard Nixon's infamous Enemies List; it was McQueen's Hollywood rival actor Paul Newman who was on the list. Ironically, McQueen was quite conservative in his political views and often backed the Republican Party. He supported the Vietnam War, was one of the few Hollywood stars who refused numerous requests to back Presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy in 1968, and turned down the chance to participate in the 1963 March on Washington. When McQueen heard he had been added to Nixon's Enemies List, he responded by immediately flying a giant American flag outside his house. Reportedly, his wife Ali McGraw responded to the whole affair by saying, "But you're the most patriotic person I know."

McQueen commanded such celebrity status in the United Kingdom that when visiting Chelsea Football Club to watch a game he was personally introduced to the players in the dressing room during the half-time break.

Missed roles
McQueen was offered the lead role in Breakfast at Tiffany's but was unable to accept due to his Wanted: Dead or Alive contract. The role went to George Peppard. He also turned down Ocean's Eleven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Driver, Apocalypse Now, and Dirty Harry. He was also the first choice for director Steven Spielberg for his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. According to Spielberg on a documentary on the Close Encounters DVD, Spielberg met McQueen at a bar, where McQueen drank beer after beer. Before leaving the bar, McQueen told Spielberg that he didn't want the role, which then went to Richard Dreyfuss.

He had been interested in starring in First Blood, but could not due to illness. He had also been offered the titular role in The Bodyguard when it was first proposed in 1976. He was to play the lead in Quigley Down Under, which was scheduled for production in 1980, but due to his illness, the project was scrapped until a decade later, with Tom Selleck in the starring role.

McQueen was also interested in making the film version of Waiting for Godot. During his time away from film he developed an interest in the classic playwrights. This led him to Beckett's Godot, but the playwright had never heard of McQueen.

Hobbies

 * Was an avid dirt bike rider.
 * Was to co-drive in a Triumph 2500 PI for the British Leyland team in the 1970 London-Mexico rally, but had to turn it down due to movie commitments.
 * Owned and flew a 1931 Pitcairn PA-8 biplane, once flown as part of the U.S. Mail Service by famed World War I flying ace, Eddie Rickenbacker. It was hangared at Santa Paula Airport an hour northwest of Hollywood.
 * Owned and flew a 1931 Pitcairn PA-8 biplane, once flown as part of the U.S. Mail Service by famed World War I flying ace, Eddie Rickenbacker. It was hangared at Santa Paula Airport an hour northwest of Hollywood.

High prices for memorabilia
The tinted sunglasses worn by McQueen in the 1968 movie The Thomas Crown Affair sold at a Bonhams & Butterfields auction in Los Angeles for $70,200 in 2006. One of his motorcycles, a 1937 Crocker, sold for a world record price of $276,500 at the same auction. McQueen's 1963 metallic-brown Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso sold for $2.31 million USD at auction on August 16, 2007.

Filmography

 * 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) – ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION for Best Actor in a Leading Role
 * 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 (1971)
 * On Any Sunday (1971) (documentary)
 * Junior Bonner (1972)
 * The Getaway (1972)
 * The Life and Legend of Bruce Lee (1973) (documentary)
 * 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)