Steve McQueen, de son vrai nom Terence Steven MacQueen — né le 24 mars 1930 à Beech Grove dans l'Indiana aux États-Unis, et mort le 7 novembre 1980 à Ciudad Juárez au Mexique —, est un acteur, producteur, pilote automobile et pilote de moto américain. Ses rôles d'anti-héros font de lui une icône de la contre-culture. En 1974, il est la star du cinéma la mieux payée au monde.

Biographie

While still attending Stella Adler's school in New York, McQueen dated Gia Scala. He eventually married three times and fathered two children. On November 2, 1956, he married actress Neile Adams, with whom he had a daughter, Terry Leslie (June 5, 1959 – March 19, 1998), and a son, Chad (born December 28, 1960). McQueen and Adams divorced in 1972. On August 31, 1973, McQueen married actress Ali MacGraw, his co-star in The Getaway, but this marriage ended in divorce in 1978. MacGraw suffered a miscarriage during their marriage. On January 16, 1980, less than a year before his death, McQueen married model Barbara Minty. One of McQueen's four grandchildren is actor Steven R. McQueen (who is best known for playing Jeremy Gilbert in The Vampire Diaries).

In the early 1970s, while separated from Adams and prior to meeting MacGraw, McQueen had a relationship with his Junior Bonner co-star Barbara Leigh, which included her pregnancy and an abortion. Actress-model Lauren Hutton has said that she had an affair with McQueen in the early 1960s.

McQueen had a daily two-hour exercise regimen, involving weightlifting and at one point, running five miles, seven days a week. McQueen learned the martial art Tang Soo Do from ninth-degree black belt Pat E. Johnson.

McQueen was known for his prolific drug use. (William Claxton said he smoked marijuana almost every day; biographer Marc Eliot alleged he used a tremendous amount of cocaine in the early 1970s) and he was a heavy cigarette smoker. McQueen sometimes drank to excess, and was arrested for driving while intoxicated in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1972.

After Charles Manson incited the murder of five people, including McQueen's friends Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring at Tate's home on August 9, 1969, it was reported McQueen was a potential target of the killers. According to his first wife, McQueen began carrying a handgun at all times in public, including at Sebring's funeral. Two months after the murders, police found a hit list with McQueen's name on it, a result of McQueen's company having rejected a Manson screenplay. In 2011, it was revealed that Sebring had invited McQueen to the party at Tate's house on the night of the murders. According to McQueen, he had invited a girlfriend to come along, but she instead suggested an intimate night at home, which probably saved his life.

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 other items. It was later discovered McQueen donated these things to the Boy's Republic reformatory School, where he spent time in his teen years. McQueen made occasional visits to the school to spend time with the students, often to play pool and speak about his experiences.

After discovering a mutual interest in racing, McQueen and Great Escape co-star James Garner became good friends. Garner lived down hill from McQueen, and McQueen recalled, "I could see that Jim was neat around his place. Flowers trimmed, no papers in the yard ... grass always cut. So 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."

McQueen's third wife Barbara Minty McQueen in her book, Steve McQueen: The Last Mile, writes of McQueen becoming an Evangelical Christian toward the end of his life. This was due in part to the influences of his flying instructor, Sammy Mason, Mason's son Pete, and Barbara. McQueen attended his local church, Ventura Missionary Church, and was visited by evangelist Billy Graham shortly before his death.

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