Steve McQueen: The Life and Legend of a Hollywood Icon »

Steve McQueen takes us on a journey as his harrowing and painful childhood is laid bare, through his glittering career, and right up to his heroic battle with cancer and dramatic death in Mexico. It chronicles the good with the ugly, revealing the great power McQueen wielded. It features numerous behind-the-scenes stories from some of his - and cinema's - greatest films, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Sand Pebbles, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, The Getaway, and Papillon. The book's triumph is the way in which the author explores McQueen in full through his larger-than-life exploits but as important, the lesser known, humanitarian side of the Hollywood legend. It also captures the fundamental essence of what made McQueen cinema's "King of Cool."

Publishers Weekly

Terrell reprises the warts-and-all portrait of the mercurial Steve McQueen, aided by 32 pages of intimate photographs. Building on the foundation of his 1993 Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel, he delves into the actor's turbulent childhood with an alcoholic, free-loving mother and an absentee father, making for a combustible personality, constantly fighting for his sense of self, not trusting easily, and becoming an at-risk teen in trouble with the law. After a stint with the Marines, McQueen broke on the New York theater scene with an Actors Studio pedigree, a highly rated TV series, and a collection of blockbuster films including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Getaway, and Bullitt. Terrell's psychologizing of his subject can be too much at times, but in the end he presents an engaging chronicle of McQueen's lifelong inner demons, competitiveness, single-mindedness, obsessive desire to triumph, romantic misfires with women, and final dogged battle with cancer. (Oct.)