On This Day

Birthday of Steve McQueen

March 24th 1930

14:58 24 March 2024

American actor Steve McQueen was born on this day in 1930. McQueen began studying acting in New York in 1952 and had minor roles in several stage productions before leaving and heading to Los Angeles in 1955 to seek acting work in Hollywood. After playing small parts in television productions, he got his first credited film role in ‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’ (1956). His first lead role was in the low-budget sci-fi movie ‘The Blob’ (1958), followed by starring roles in 'The St. Louis Bank Robbery' (1959) and 'Never So Few' (1959) directed by John Sturges who cast him in his forthcoming western: 'The Magnificent Seven' (1960) where McQueen was one of the stand outs among the ensemble cast.

The 1960s saw the actor become one of the worlds biggest movie stars with leading roles in films including 'Love with the Proper Stranger' (1963), 'The Cincinnati Kid' (1965), 'Nevada Smith' (1966), 'The Sand Pebbles' (1966) for which he received an Academy Award Best Actor nomination, 'The Thomas Crown Affair' (1968) and his personal favourite of his movies, the classic cop thriller 'Bullitt' (1968).

The 1970s saw him star in the Sam Peckinpah films 'Junior Bonner' (1972) and 'The Getaway' (1972) and alongside Dustin Hoffman in Franklin J. Schaffner's 'Papillon' (1973). By the time he starred with Paul Newman and an all star cast in the epic disaster movie 'The Towering Inferno' (1974) he had become the highest-paid movie star in the world but took a four-year hiatus from acting before returning to star in an adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play 'An Enemy of the People' (1978).

His final two film roles were in the western 'Tom Horn' (1980) and the action drama 'The Hunter' (1980). After suffering poor health for several years, Steve McQueen died of a heart attack on November 7th 1980, 12 hours after surgery for cancer. He was 50 years old. The "King of Cool" will always be one of the greatest movie stars of all time.