To say that Steve McQueen was the King of Cool would be a little bit of an understatement as he starred in movies such as The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and Bullit, movies that have gone out to become classics.
Before becoming an actor McQueen joined the United States Marine Corps in 1947 and served until 1950 when he was honourably discharged.
By 1952 he was studying acting at Sanford Meisner’s Neighbourhood Playhouse before going on appear in productions such as The Member of the Wedding.
He made his Broadway debut in 1955 when he appeared in play A Hatful of Rain before moving into television and movies.
He mixed and matched his roles over the coming years with Trackdown and The Defenders before making working on movies such as Never Love a Stranger and The Blob.
But his big breakthrough movie came in 1960 when he starred in The Magnificent Seven alongside Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson.
The Magnificent Seven is still regarded as one of the greatest Western movies of all time. He followed this up with another classic in 1963 in the form of The Great Escape.
The movie follows a group of soldiers as they try to escape from a World War II POW camp but is best known for McQueen’s motorcycle leap.
The movie cemented him as a big screen superstar and his career soared and went on to star in Love With The Proper Stranger and The Cincinnati Kid.
In 1966 McQueen picked up his only Academy Award nomination for his role in The Sand Pebbles, which also starred Richard Attenborough.
By 1968 Steve McQueen's career was at its peak with the release of Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair he cemented himself as the King of Cool.
Bullitt and is widely regarded as one of Steve McQueen's most memorable roles and has become a classic in the thriller police movie genre.
Steve McQueen stars as Detective Frank Bullitt, a hard-driving, tough-as-nails San Francisco cop.
But what Bullitt is most famous for is its legendary car chase through San Francisco, when everything was done for real and not in a studio with special effects.
This is still the greatest car chase sequence in any thriller ever made why? Because it had a touch of true to life in it there was no over dramatic music and no clever camera work it was just simply two cars in a flat out race.
By the seventies McQueen had starred in The Getaway and disaster classic The Towering Inferno.
Steve McQueen died in 1980 at the age of fifty but the actor still remains one of the best and coolest actors to ever grace the big screen.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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