Steve McQueen.

McQueen joined the Marine Corps at age 17 and worked as a tank driver and mechanic. He earned a commendation for rescuing five Marines during a training accident. He was confined to base for 41 days and fined $90 for being absent without leave AWOL from Camp Lejeune. He avoided a dishonorable discharge and later used the GI Bill to study at the Actors Studio.

His role in Never So Few 1959 was originally going to be played by Sammy Davis Jr.. A feud between Davis and Frank Sinatra led to Davis being dropped, giving McQueen his breakthrough role.

Some of the few movie stars he admired were Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, and John Wayne.

Of all the characters he ever played, he frequently cited Lt. Frank Bullitt from Bullitt 1968 as his favorite.

He was the son of Julian Crawford and William Terence McQueen, and had Scottish, English, Scots-Irish/Northern Irish, German, and distant Cornish, Dutch, and Welsh ancestry. He was raised by his grandparents, Lillian Thomson and Victor Lee Crawford. A troubled teenager, he often ran away from home, working on ships, as an oil field laborer and fairground barker. He spent five years in a California reformatory. He also had a younger paternal half-sister, Terri McQueen, whom he never met.

Kevin Costner has named McQueen as his favorite actor and main influence.

After The Towering Inferno 1974 he was offered several multi-million-dollar roles but refused them all, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 1975, Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977, Superman 1978, Raise the Titanic 1980, and a film called Deajum’s Wife.

His name appeared on President Richard Nixon’s List of Enemies in 1972. In reality, McQueen was conservative, with a strong belief in self-help. In 1963 he declined to participate in the March on Washington for civil rights, and in 1968 refused to support Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Ali MacGraw asked how he could be considered a threat by Nixon, and he responded by flying an enormous American flag outside his house.

His friend and co-star Richard Attenborough said that if McQueen had lived longer, he would have been regarded as the greatest film actor since Spencer Tracy.

He had a feud with next-door neighbor Keith Moon of The Who in Malibu. Moon left his bathroom light on at night, shining into McQueen’s bedroom. After telling Moon repeatedly to turn it off without success, McQueen took out a shotgun and blew out the light. He also held a four-year grudge against neighbor James Garner, whom McQueen resented for winning the lead role in Grand Prix 1966.

He followed a daily two-hour exercise regimen, involving weightlifting and running 5 miles 8 km seven days a week.

He designed a motorsports bucket seat for which a patent was issued in 1971.

Although he was the highest-paid star of the 1960s, McQueen had a reputation for being tight-fisted. On some films he would demand ten electric razors and dozens of jeans, later giving them to Boys Republic, the reform school he attended.

In the movie S.W.A.T. 2003, Colin Farrell’s character Jim Street has a poster of McQueen’s Bullitt in his apartment. Farrell frequently cites McQueen as one of his idols.

When he briefly left The Great Escape 1963 because his character was smaller than he wanted, James Coburn and James Garner convinced him to return. The film has become his best-known role.

He considered being a professional race car driver. He drove in the British Touring Car Championship in 1961, finishing third at Brands Hatch. In the 1970 12 Hours of Sebring, Peter Revson and McQueen driving with a cast on his left foot from a motorcycle accident won the three-litre class in a Porsche 908/02, missing overall victory by 23 seconds.

During the scene in Bullitt 1968 where a giant airliner taxis just above him, observers were shocked no double was used. Asked if the producers couldn’t have found a dummy, McQueen wryly replied, They did.

Dick Powell, head of Four Star Productions, was concerned about McQueen for Wanted: Dead or Alive because he wasn’t big or tall and didn’t know how to ride a horse. He changed his mind after seeing McQueen’s charismatic performance in the early rushes.

Of the 2000 performers who auditioned for Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio in 1955, only two were accepted: Martin Landau and McQueen. They appeared together in The Monster 1960 and Nevada Smith 1966.

Columbia Pictures wanted to cast him opposite Paul Newman in In Cold Blood 1967, but he was busy with Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair 1968.

He intended to retire after filming The Towering Inferno 1974.

He was William Friedkin’s first choice for the Jackie Scanlon character in Sorcerer 1977. McQueen accepted on condition that his wife Ali MacGraw have a co-starring role. Friedkin refused, and McQueen dropped out.

In Papillon 1973, he performed the famous stunt where he jumps off a cliff, calling it one of the most exhilarating experiences of his life.

In 1960, he formed his own production company called Scuderia Condor Enterprises, later renamed Solar Productions, which produced many of his films.

He was originally slated to star with Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969 but left due to a billing disagreement. The same billing method was used in The Towering Inferno 1974, where he insisted he and Newman have equal lines.

He quit smoking cigarettes in 1978, although he continued to smoke cigars.

He appeared, helmeted and uncredited, as a motorcyclist in Dixie Dynamite 1976. He was paid about $120 daily and was only noticed when he queued to accept payment.

He trained in Tang Soo Do with ninth-degree black belt Pat E. Johnson, not Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris as is popularly believed. His son was trained in karate by Norris. Lee trained him in Jeet Kune Do.

He turned down Clint Eastwood’s role in Play Misty for Me 1971, thinking the female lead was stronger.

He was considered for Charlton Heston’s role in Planet of the Apes 1968.

Following Bullitt 1968, McQueen found it hilarious that teenagers considered him the coolest celebrity, given he was almost 40. In November 1968 he declared support for the Vietnam War and voted for Richard Nixon.

The last words he uttered on screen were God bless you in The Hunter 1980. He died shortly after the film’s release.

He was the first actor to make the transition from television star to huge box-office movie star.

He was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999.

He was offered the co-starring role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s 1961 but was under contract for Wanted: Dead or Alive, preventing his appearance. The role went to George Peppard.

The King of Cool became a born-again Christian shortly before he died, influenced by his third wife Barbara Minty and his flying instructor Sammy Mason. He studied the Bible with Rev. Billy Graham. His favorite verse was John 3:16.

He was posthumously awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6834 Hollywood Boulevard on June 12, 1986.

He turned down Ocean’s Eleven 1960 on the advice of friend Hedda Hopper, who told him to be his own man rather than Frank Sinatra’s flunky.