[5] Terrence Stephen McQueen was born to a single mother on March 24, 1930, at St. Francis Hospital in Beech Grove, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis.

"The day I left the farm," he recalled, "Uncle Claude gave me a personal going-away present—a gold pocket watch, with an inscription inside the case."

[31] When McQueen appeared in a two-part Westinghouse Studio One television presentation entitled "The Defender", Hollywood manager Hilly Elkins took note of him[32] and decided that B movies would be a good place for the young actor to make his mark.

McQueen's first film role under Elkins' management was a bit part in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), directed by Robert Wise and starring Paul Newman.

McQueen appeared again on Trackdown in Episode 31 of the first season, in which he played twin brothers, one of whom was an outlaw sought by Culp's character, Hoby Gilman.

In interviews associated with the DVD release of Wanted: Dead or Alive, Robert Culp of Trackdown claimed credit for bringing McQueen to Hollywood and landing him the part of Randall.

[7] Randall's special holster held a sawed-off .44–40 Winchester rifle (nicknamed the "Mare's Leg") instead of the six-gun carried by the typical Western character, although the cartridges in the gunbelt were dummy .45-70, chosen because they "looked tougher".

The 94 episodes that ran from 1958 until early 1961 kept McQueen steadily employed, and he became a fixture at the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, where much of the outdoor action for Wanted: Dead or Alive was shot.

The Magnificent Seven (1960), in which he played Vin Tanner and starred with Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Robert Vaughn, Charles Bronson, Horst Buchholz and James Coburn, became McQueen's first major hit and led to his withdrawal from Wanted: Dead or Alive.

[7] (In his autobiography,[33] Eli Wallach reports struggling to conceal his amusement while watching the filming of the funeral procession scene in which Brynner's and McQueen's characters first meet.

He later appeared as the titular Nevada Smith, a character from Harold Robbins' novel The Carpetbaggers, portrayed by Alan Ladd two years earlier in a movie version of that novel.

[14] He followed his Oscar nomination with 1968's Bullitt – one of his best-known films, and his personal favorite – which co-starred Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn and Don Gordon.

[36] McQueen's character drove a 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390, while the antagonist's black Dodge Charger was driven by veteran stunt driver Bill Hickman.

When Bullitt became a huge box-office success, Warner Bros. tried to woo him back, but he refused, and his next film was made with an independent studio and released by United Artists.

In 1971, McQueen starred in the auto-racing drama Le Mans, which received mixed reviews, followed by Junior Bonner in 1972, a story about an aging rodeo rider.

McQueen then took on a physically demanding role as a prisoner on Devil's Island in the 1973 film Papillon, alongside Dustin Hoffman as his character's tragic companion.

Spy novelist Jeremy Duns revealed that McQueen was considered for the lead role in a film adaptation of The Diamond Smugglers, written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming.

[54] Although the jump over the fence in The Great Escape was done by Bud Ekins for insurance purposes, McQueen did have considerable screen time riding his 650 cc Triumph TR6 Trophy motorcycle.

[57] In the 1970 12 Hours of Sebring race, Peter Revson and McQueen (driving with a cast on his left foot from a motorcycle accident two weeks earlier) won with a Porsche 908/02 in the three-litre class and missed winning overall by 21.1 seconds to Mario Andretti/Ignazio Giunti/Nino Vaccarella in a five-litre Ferrari 512S.

[failed verification][60] McQueen competed in off-road motorcycle racing, frequently running a BSA Hornet and using alias Harvey Mushman.

In 1964, McQueen and Ekins were part of a four-rider (plus one reserve) first-ever official U.S. team-entry into the Silver Vase category of the International Six Days Trial (ISDT),[61] an Enduro-type off-road motorcycling event held that year in Erfurt, East Germany.

One of the two Mustangs used in the film was badly damaged, judged beyond repair, and believed to have been scrapped until it surfaced in Mexico in 2017,[85] while the other one, which McQueen attempted to purchase in 1977,[86] is hidden from the public eye.

[28] On November 2, 1956, he married Filipino actress and dancer Neile Adams,[88] with whom he had a daughter, Terry Leslie (June 5, 1959 – March 19, 1998),[89][90] and a son, Chad (December 28, 1960 – September 11, 2024).

[98] In Cheyenne, Wyoming on July 12, 1973, McQueen married actress Ali MacGraw (his co-star in The Getaway), but their marriage ended in a divorce on August 9, 1978.

His shortness of breath grew more pronounced and on December 22, 1979, after filming The Hunter, a biopsy revealed pleural mesothelioma,[113] a cancer associated with asbestos exposure for which there is no known cure.

[119] Controversy arose over the trip because McQueen sought treatment from William Donald Kelley, who was promoting a variation of the Gerson therapy that used coffee enemas, frequent washing with shampoos, daily injections of fluid containing live cells from cattle and sheep, massages, and laetrile, a reputed anti-cancer drug available in Mexico but long known to be both toxic and ineffective in treating cancer.

[126] On November 7, 1980, McQueen died of a heart attack at 3:45 a.m. at a Juárez hospital, 12 hours after surgery to remove or reduce numerous metastatic tumors in his neck and abdomen.

He was credited with contributions including financing the film On Any Sunday, supporting a team of off-road riders, and enhancing the public image of motorcycling overall.

After being sold and raced in the 1970s, Jerry Seinfeld acquired 022 in 2002, who asked Joe Cavaglieri to fully restore it to the 1971 film era in Gulf Porsche team livery.

[156] The blue-tinted sunglasses (Persol 714) worn by McQueen in the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair sold at a Bonhams & Butterfield auction in Los Angeles for $70,200 in 2006.