Steve McQueen

Born in Beech Grove, Indiana and raised in Slater, Missouri. The despair of his mother he was sent to a reform school[?] aged fourteen. He soon left the school and drifted before joining the marines in 1947. In 1952 he took advantage of the G.I. Bill[?] to study at the Actors' Studio in New York, making his Broadway debut in 1955 in A Hatful of Rain.

He moved into film in 1956 with Somebody Up There Likes Me, securing his first lead role, as Steven McQueen, in The Blob (1958). He improved his recognition with the television series Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958-60). His breakthrough was in The Great Escape (1963) and his fame peaked in 1968 with Bullitt. From there he mixed character roles in works such as 1973's Papillon with pure spectacle in Le Mans (1971) or The Getaway (1972). After The Towering Inferno (1974) McQueen did not return to film until 1978, he played the part of Dr. Stockmann in the screen adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. He appeared in only two further films before his death due to a heart attack following last-ditch cancer treatment.