“I’m not sure that acting is something for a grown man to be doing.” – Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen Biography

The King of Cool as he became known, was born Terence Steven McQueen on 24 March 1930, in a suburb of Indianapolis called Beech Grove. He grew up on his uncle Claude’s farm during the great depression with his grandparents. They had been left to look after Steve because his alcoholic mother, Julia Ann couldn’t cope alone following the departure of her new young son’s stunt pilot father William Terence McQueen only six months after they had met. McQueen’s interest in racing is said to have been triggered by the gift of a red tricycle given to him by his uncle when he was four years old. Four years later, Julia Ann found herself a new husband and moved to Indianapolis, taking eight-year-old Steve with her.

The young McQueen’s new life was a marked contrast to his old one. Uncle Claude had been good to him, but his stepfather would regularly beat him. At the young age of only nine, he left home to live on the streets and started to turn towards a life of crime. Thankfully his mother stepped in and sent him back to her brother’s farm in Slater.

Julia Ann’s second marriage ended in divorce, but she married for the third time and moved to Los Angeles and sent for Steve to join her when he was twelve. His new home was much like the last one he’d had with his mother and he and his mother received regular beatings. Steve rebelled again and once again was sent back to the farm. He didn’t stay too long this time though and left when he was fourteen to join the circus. This too wouldn’t last that long, and he ended up back with his mother in Los Angeles and started again to drift towards crime. After being caught stealing hubcaps and getting into a fight with his stepfather, he was remanded to the California Junior Boys Republic in Chino. In this institution Steve McQueen would start to mature as the boys would find a way to set their own rules and if they weren’t followed then punishment would follow, but this made Steve respect the rules to a certain extent and although he wasn’t popular at first, he ended up being elected to the Boys Council, where he helped to set the rules. He left the Boys Republic at the age of sixteen but had a life-long association with the place, regularly visiting and talking to the boys, even during the height of his fame. It also turned out that the bulk goods such as razors and pairs of jeans that he would demand as riders for many of the films he starred in, ended up at the Boys Republic.

Still sixteen years old, McQueen once again returned to his mother who was at this point in time living in New York. He then met a couple of sailors and volunteered to serve on a ship heading for the Dominican Republic but disappeared once he got there and ended up working in a brothel before heading for Texas and a number of different dead-end jobs.

In 1947 at the age of seventeen McQueen joined the Marines and during an initial period of resistance to authority was demoted to private, seven times. Eventually though after spending 41 days in the brig for resisting arrest after going AWOL he decided to embrace military discipline and even managed to get assigned to an honour guard tasked with guarding President Truman’s yacht. He was honourably discharged from the Marine Corps in 1950.

Steve McQueen’s life in acting started at Sanford Meisner’s Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York in 1952. In order to earn money, he raced motorcycles at the weekend at the Long Island City Raceway where he found he had talent enough to earn around $100 in prize money most weekends. He had a number of minor theatre parts during this time and made his Broadway debut in A Hatful of Rain in 1955. In the same year, at the age of twenty-five, he left New York and headed for Hollywood seeking employment as an actor. He was spotted in a two-part TV show called The Defenders and g...