Steve McQueen’s allure resides in his steely, blue-eyed gaze. Men see the guarded machismo they long to emulate; women see a man struggling to withstand life’s contradictions, and fall hopelessly in love. Some have said McQueen’s acting style was simply to open his eyes, with critics pointing out that as an actor McQueen never seemed to do much of anything, while his defenders admired the effortlessness of his performance.
Film historian David Shipman once said that “Steve McQueen can act with the back of his head. He can act without doing anything. His voice isn’t remarkable and he shows no sign of versatility. But versatility, where he is concerned, is immaterial. He has only to appear on the screen to fill it.”
McQueen was at his professional peak in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, one of Hollywood’s most successful, if not well-behaved, leading men. He made too few good movies—among them are The Magnificent Seven (1960), which marked the beginning of his legitimate stardom, The Great Escape (1963), which made him an American movie hero, The Sand Pebbles (1966), his only work nominated for an Academy Award, and Bullitt (1968), which showed the definitive McQueen heroic anti-hero and established a new genre expanded on by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry series and others.