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.
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Hide AdOur 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.
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Hide AdMcQueen 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.
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Hide AdEven 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.