Movie star King of Cool – trying to discover the real McQueen

In truth I've never really wanted to. Such friendships are always rather one-sided affairs with said movie star being the lead player and the friend being the support, foil or stooge.

I knew Ewan McGregor briefly a long time ago. Then he was hired by George Lucas, gave a bad impression of Alec Guinness in the Star Wars prequels and became a rather different person to the affable young Scot I (almost) became friends with. But that was in 1997. When I last saw him he didn't remember me at all.

Our relationships with movie stars are generally from a distance. How many of us can genuinely claim to be on intimate terms with the people we watch on a movie screen?

I would suggest very, very few. Even if one works in "the biz" there is a vast gulf between the image one absorbs and the reality of the person concerned. And actors are, at the end of the day, actors. They're paid to play a role. Sometimes they can't shake it off.

All of this brings me to Steve McQueen. Last week I presented an introduction in London to the National Film Theatre's season of McQueen movies, which I curated.

McQueen is the ultimate movie mystery man. A 24-carat enigma. He was as much a creation of his own imagination as of the studio PR man. And his reputation as cinema's King of Cool was an award posthumously given.

McQueen brought his own inimitable variety of sex appeal and street punk savvy to nearly 30 pictures over 25 years. Eventually, the character actor morphed into a box office brand: edgy, anti-authoritarian, taciturn and no-nonsense.

By his own admission he was a limited actor and strove to make the most of his own innate gifts. That well-worn street tough persona was no act of macho swagger; neither did McQueen have to work too hard to convince audiences that he was a loner, a rebel and a non-conformist.

But who was Steve McQueen, really?

He made the journey from semi-literate juvenile delinquent to the world's most popular, and highest-earning, film actor, and, in less than a quarter of a century, re-energised the image of the modern movie star, re-invented himself in the process and emerged as the quintessence of cool.

Then, quite suddenly, he was dead at 50.

Somewhere in among all that lies the real McCoy – or the real McQueen. In attempting to unravel him, his movies and his legacy I came as close

to knowing him as I am ever likely to.

Even his friends claim he was a different person to each of them.

I would have liked to have met McQueen. I doubt he would have been easy to know or understand.

And I'm not certain he would have warmed to me. But I'm sure I would have liked him.